Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 22 / Trend D.Khatinoglu/
Iran has started the construction of the Ince Burun-Gonbad Kavous-Gorgan railway, the IRNA reported.
The primary agreement on the construction of the rail link between Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan was signed between the presidents of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan in April 2007 in the city of Turkmenbashi and its final agreement was signed in a summit meeting in Tehran in September of the same year by the three presidents.
The total route of the railway is 1000 kilometers, of which 90 kilometers would be in Iran, 700 kilometers in Turkmenistan and 210 kilometers in Kazakhstan.
The first train has been launched symbolically in the Bandar Abbas - Almaty route in Oct 2011.
"The Bandar Abbas - Almaty corridor is 3,756 kilometer in length and has capacity to transport 2 million tons of goods," he said.
The Uzen-Kyzylkaya-Bereket-Etrek-Gorgan railway line, connecting Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran, is part of North-South railway which has been launched today.
The railway facilitates transportation of goods from the Central Asian countries to the Persian Gulf.
The Etrek-Gorgan section of the railway will be complete in March. Therefore, Iran joined the North-South railway via its existing Mashhad-Sarakhs railway section, which operates since 1995.
Thus, the train will run to Turkmenistan via the Mashhad-Sarakhs route and onwards to Kazakhstan.
The North-South Transnational Corridor is a 677km-long railway line connecting the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Ozbekistan and Turkmenistan with Iran and the Persian Gulf. It links Uzen in Kazakhstan with Gyzylgaya-Bereket-Etrek in Turkmenistan and end at Gorgan in Iran's Golestan province. In Iran, the railway will be linked to national network making its way to the ports of the Persian Gulf.
Earlier, Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov told media that Iran intends to complete constructing its section within the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway project by next March.