TURKEY: RAILWAY TO LINK TURKEY, AZERBAIJAN AND GEORGIA

AKI, Italy
Jan 16 2007

Istanbul, 16 Jan. (AKI) – Work on a 500-million dollar project for
the construction of a railway running between Turkey, Azerbaijan and
Georgia is expected to start in July 2007, the head of Georgia’s
railway authority has revealed. Irakli Ezugbaya said the 258
kilometre-long railway would be completed by mid 2009. Azerbaijan’s
minister of transport Ziya Memedov visited the Georgian capital
Tbilisi, over the weekend to discuss details of the project.

However the United States, which was to provide some financial support
has pulled out of the project in protest over the exclusion of Armenia
– which borders on all of the three countries – due to its political
problems with Turkey and its territorial disputes with Azerbaijan,
Turkish news reports said.

Lobby groups who are demanding that Turkey recognise that the Ottomans
carried out a genocide against Armenians in the first decades of the
20th century, have persuade Washington to withdraw from the project,
the report said.

The European Union has also announced it won’t provide any finance
for the project.

When completed the new railway line is expected to become
a part of a Trans-Asian railway network connected to the
Baku-Caspian-Turkmenistan-Altmati-China route.