Turan Information Agency, Azerbaijani Opposition
Friday
Baku Not to Allow Transportation of Armenian Goods by Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Railway
Baku / 13.10.17 / Turan: In the end of October, the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway (BTK) will be put into operation. It will annually transport about a million passengers and five million tons of cargo.
The BTK route bypasses Armenia. But Armenian businessmen intend to use this way, taking their cargoes by the working Yerevan-Tbilisi railway and adding Armenian cars in Georgia to the train going to Kars.
"Armenian cargo carriers will certainly take advantage of the opportunity to transport goods on the future BTK railway, if such an opportunity arises," the director general of an Armenian forwarding company Gagik Aghajanyan told the Russian news agency Regnum.
"While the Kars-Akhuryan route between Turkey and Armenia is closed, Armenian cargo carriers will try to take advantage of the BTK opportunities, which, in all likelihood, will lead to an increase in the cargo transit flow to Armenia," Aghajanyan said.
Azerbaijan for the construction of the Georgian section of the road allocated a loan of $ 775 million. Financing of this project by the State Oil Fund is carried out in accordance with the Decree of the President of Azerbaijan On Implementing Activities on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Project dated February 21, 2007.
Can Azerbaijan prevent Armenians from taking advantage of the new road, given that Baku financed most of the construction of this road?
The Georgian political scientist Vakhtang Mansaya believes the main interests of the project owners, that is Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, must first of all be taken into account in the work of the BTK railroad.
Turan asked officials in the Ministry of Communications, High Technologies and Transport and the Azerbaijan Railways CJSC about the possibility for the Armenians to use the BTK road. The Ministry reported the CJSC is engaged in works on BTK. An employee of the railway company, who did not want to be named, firmly assured the Armenian cargo will not appear on the BTK railway. "This is the political will of Azerbaijan," he added.
But the official could not explain the mechanism by which the Armenian railway cars that come to Georgia will not be attached to the locomotive carrying the train to Turkey. There is no corresponding item in the documents on the BTK project.
"We are working hard to launch the new railway in a timely manner, and when it starts to function, you will see that Armenian goods are not transported by it," the employee of the international relations department of the Azerbaijan Railways CJSC promised Turan.–0–