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Azerbaijan to Present Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Railway Project in Geneva

Business Materials 12 February 2008 13:45 (UTC +04:00)

Azerbaijan, Baku, 12 February / Trend corr S. Agayeva / The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project will be presented at the annual session of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) in Geneva on 19 February, the Azerbaijani Ambassador to Switzerland Elchin Amirbeyov said in a telephone conversation from Bern on 12 February.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars project includes the construction of a 105 km railway road with a 76 km section running via Turkey and a 29 km section via Georgia. Moreover, the 183 km section of the Akhalkalaki-Marabda-Tbilisi railway will also be reconstructed to improve the carrying capacity to 15mln tons of cargo per year. There are plans to build in Akhalkalaki a place for the transition of trains from the track existing in Georgia to the European track. The project is estimated at $422mln and taking into consideration the accompanying infrastructure, its cost will total $600mln.

According to the Ambassador, the project will be presented by the Azerbaijani Transport Minister Ziya Mammadov. He will hold bilateral meetings with the delegation heads of the European countries. Mammadov is also expected to meet with his Swiss counterpart.

ECE, a regional commission of the UN, was established after the World War II to assist in the restoration of the economics of European countries. At the beginning of the 90s, the Commission dramatically expanded and along with the European countries, USA, Canada and Israel, it unites all former Soviet republics.

The correspondent can be contacted at: [email protected]

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