India chips in to build trans-Asian railway link

10-Mar-07
The Brunei Times
By P Vijian - NEW DELHI

The surprise in this article below, is finding that Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey agreed to join TAR but Georgia so far has not. But Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey just finished signing the Kars-Akhalkalki-Baku railway with promises of extending it "Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili described the Kars-Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Baku Railroad Project as a "momentous geopolitical breakthrough” after negotiating with visiting Turkish and Azerbaijani leaders on February 7. He underlined that this new regional railway will link Asia with Europe to become “a modern version of the new Silk Road.”"here. But this railway bypasses Armenia "Position of the official Yerevan on construction of the Kars-Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Baku railway bypassing Armenia remains the same: the Armenian side opposes it, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan announced at a news conference on March 9." .”" here. So why have Azerbaijan and Turkey joined TAR ? Do they need funding in order to build their portion? Where does this leave Armenia, which has also joined TAR?

INDIA today agreed to join 18 other countries to build the ambitious Trans Asian Railway (TAR) network that is expected to create a grand train link connecting different continents.

The Indian cabinet announced that it would help in the construction of the 11,460km rail link that would ease the movement of rail traffic and enhance trade and tourism among Asian countries.

The grandiose idea was mooted in 1969, but took a back seat due to the changing political and economic climate over the last three decades.

The initial TAR project envisaged by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (Unescap) was to construct a massive integrated transcontinental rail network dubbed as Iron Silk Road _ from Singapore to Istanbul in Turkey spanning more than 14,000km in total.

According to the 1960s proposal, the TAR network would eventually connect Europe and Africa.
The project had been divided into three corridors and India will be part of the southern corridor _ that connects Thailand and the southern Chinese province of Yunan with Turkey through Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran and Sir Lanka.The inter-governmental agreement on Trans-Asian Railway Network was adopted at the 62nd session of the Unescap held in Jakarta in April last year.

The Indian cabinet approved the signing and ratifying the Inter-governmental Agreement on TAR that will formalise the coordinated development of the rail network connecting various Asian capitals and industrial cities.

India is expected to construct about 350km of the stretch between Jiribam in India and Moreh, Myanmar.

Until last November, 18 countries signed the agreement _ Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, South Korea, Russia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

Bernama

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.