TEHRAN EXPRESSES WILLINGNESS TO BUILD IRANIAN SECTION OF IRAN-ARMENIA RAILWAY
NOYAN TAPAN
Dec 23, 2008
YEREVAN
The idea of building an Iran-Armenia railway was discussed once again
at the recent sitting of the Armenian-Iranian intergovernmental
commission in Tehran, and Iran expressed a willingness to build a
raliway from the Iranian city of Tabriz up to the Armenian border,
the co-chair of the commission, Armenian minister of energy and natural
resources Armen Movsisian said at the December 22 press conference.
In his words, Armenia is now carrying out work on finding financing
sources for construction of the railway’s Armenian section. It was
mentioned that various schemes of constructing the Armenian section
and the opportunities of participation of various investors in the
construction are being discussed. The minister expressed an opinion
that solutions will be found in 2009.
As the Armenian minister of transport and communication Gurgen Sargsyan
stated earlier, out of three versions of constructing the Armenian
section of Armenia-Iran railway, the version of a 447-km railway is
most preferable.
In case of two other versions, the railway will be either 373 km
or 443 km long. Each of the three versions envisages constructing a
railway from the border of the two countries to Jermuk, and by the
preferable version, it will go through Selim mountain pass, Martuni,
Gavar and up to the operating Gagarin station. In the minister’s
opimnion, it will take 5 years to build the railway.
It should be mentioned that an agreement on allocation of a one
million dollar grant by the Asian Development Bank to Armenia was
signed recently, by which design work of the indicated railway and
a motorway to be built in parallel will be done.
According to experts, construction of Armenia-Iran railway will cost
1.5-2 billion dollars.