Details added (first version posted on 14:02)
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 15
By Farhad Daneshvar – Trend
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif underlined the importance of the South-West transit corridor during the press conference following a quadrilateral meeting with counterparts from Georgia, Turkey and Azerbaijan.
“We believe that this is a historic opportunity for us to start something that will be in the interest of stability and economic development of the region,” he said.
“The transit corridor is an import corridor that will link not only our four countries together but it will also provide access from the Indian Ocean to the Black Sea as well as to the Mediterranean Sea that would basically facilitate connectivity between the two very important parts of the world,” he added.
The minister further touched upon efforts to complete the railway network connecting Iran to Azerbaijan.
“We have completed the agreement between Iran and Azerbaijan to finish about 180 kilometers of the railway to connect Astara and Rasht and that would connect basically the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea and it will be finalized within three years,” he said.
In the next meeting we have already decided to work on working groups to deal with specific areas of cooperation including transport and transit, energy cooperation, tourism, he added.
Speaking about Baku statement, he said this is a roadmap for the future cooperation and we will have joint working groups and joint task forces in order to move the process forward.