Messenger.ge, Georgia
Tuesday, April 5, 2005, #061 (0835)

New railways in the South Caucasus

Economic – and political – ambitions unfold in plans for new rail lines
connecting East to West
By M. Alkhazashvili

Several new railway projects are currently being considered across the South
Caucasus, railway lines that would allow the region to at least partly
capitalize on its potential as a transit hub.

Azerbaijani, Georgian and Turkish engineers are in Baku on April 4-5 to work
on the issue of the proposed Kars-Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Baku railway.
According to reports, meanwhile, Russia is seeking to rent the Kars-Gyumri
railway linking Turkey with Armenia. Kazakhstan has also proposed a
cross-continent line linking China with Turkey, though the current route
will bypass the Caucasus and run via Turkmenistan and Iran.

Transporting cargo between Asia and Europe remains an economic, and
geopolitical, problem in need of resolution, but is also an area of huge
potential for the strategically located countries of the South Caucasus. The
economic collapse in the region in the 1990s, along with the various
conflicts, has meant that the region is yet to capitalize on this potential.
One example is the Kars-Gyumri-Yerevan-Nakhichevan-Baku railway linking
Turkey with Azerbaijan via Armenia. The line has been closed since the
beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and its reactivation remains
dependent on the successful resolution of this frozen conflict.

As a result, it was proposed more than a decade ago that a new railway be
constructed linking Turkey with Azerbaijan via Georgia. This would meaning
constructing a new line between Kars in Turkey and Akhalkalaki in southern
Georgia. Such a line would not only link the three countries’ railway
systems together, it would also allow cargo to be transported from the
Caspian to the Mediterranean direct.

Construction of this railway could potentially jeopardize relations with
both Russia and Armenia, however, and as Rezonansi writes, the Shevardnadze
administration was never courageous enough to take this risk. Although they
would benefit economically from the link, furthermore, the predominantly
ethnic Armenian population of Akhalkalaki have always opposed the railway.

Since the Rose revolution, however, the governments of Turkey, Azerbaijan
and Georgia have taken strides towards constructing the railway, which will
cost an estimated USD 1.5 billion. 68 of the 96 km stretch is in Turkey, and
the Turkish government has already pledged to finance the main part of the
work.

Meanwhile, Russia is hoping that the project will be made unnecessary by the
renewal of the Kars-Gyumri railway. Russian Minister of Transport Igor
Levitin said this week that Russia had asked to rent the railway line,
adding that transporting cargo via this line would be twice as cheap as by
the Kars-Akhalkalaki section. The Minister told the countries to put aside
their political differences and discuss the issue solely from an economic
point of view, although it is virtually impossible to keep politics out of
it, as Russia’s offer is motivated less by economics and more by politics.

Even if Turkey agrees to this, however, Azerbaijan will not permit cargo to
cross between Armenia and Azerbaijan, even if via a third country such as
Georgia and bound for a fourth – Turkey. The Karsi-Gyurmi railway can thus
not be seen as an alternative to the Kars-Akhalkalaki railway.

These ongoing disputes between the South Caucasus countries are holding the
region back from fully capitalizing on its potential as a transit hub, and
this can be seen in Kazakhstan’s initiative to build a 4,000 kilometer-long
railway from the Kazakh-Chinese border that would bypass the Caspian and
South Caucasus and pass instead through Turkmenistan and Iran.

The project was presented recently by Kazakh Transportation and
Communications Minister Hajimurat Nemanov, who said that the railway would
be constructed entirely from scratch, as current railway systems in
Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan do not adhere to European standards and are
unable to carry modern cargo trucks. Nemanov stated that cargo could be
transported along this route from Chinese eastern ports to the major Dutch
port of Rotterdam in just 13 days, as reported by newspaper Akhali Taoba.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress