Ashgabat to host trilateral summit of heads of Central Asian states
[ad_1]
The first trilateral summit of Central Asian countries in the format “Turkmenistan – Tajikistan – Uzbekistan” will be held in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, on August 4. It is noteworthy that the date of the event a day before the official announcement was not public. The event will be attended by the presidents of three countries: Serdar Berdimuhamedov, Emomali Rahmon and Shavkat Mirziyoyev. At the upcoming meeting, the heads of state will discuss topical issues in the development of the regional agenda, the official website of the presidential administration of Uzbekistan reports, without specifying details.
According to the official Turkmen government newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan, which was the first to announce the date of the summit, issues of cooperation in the transport, water energy and environmental fields may take an important place in the negotiations of the leaders of the three states at the upcoming summit. The parties are also interested in building a modern infrastructure that would unite the transport systems of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In this regard, the publication recalls that today in Turkmenistan, the construction of the Ashgabat-Turkmenabat high-speed highway (located on the left bank of the Amu Darya, on the border with Uzbekistan. – Vedomosti) is underway, which, according to the authors of the article, will raise the transit capabilities of Central Asia to a qualitatively a new level, ensuring the inflow of investments and creating new conditions for economic growth.
Uzbekistan has the most developed logistical connectivity with neighboring Afghanistan, controlled by the Taliban movement (recognized as terrorist and banned in Russia, not recognized by any of the UN members as a legitimate Afghan government. – Vedomosti).
The trilateral summit of presidents in Ashgabat is a preparation for a broader summit of the leaders of the five Central Asian countries, scheduled for September 14-15 in Dushanbe, Farhod Tolipov, a political scientist from Uzbekistan, believes. According to the expert, the absence of the presidents of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan at the forum in Ashgabat may be caused by disagreements between the participants of the Ashgabat summit with them regarding the ways of developing regional cooperation. Tolipov recalled that following the results of the previous Consultative Meeting of Heads of State in July last year in the Kyrgyz Cholpon-Ata, representatives of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan did not sign an agreement on friendship, good neighborliness and cooperation for the development of the region, which provided for the activation of military, trade, economic, logistics and cultural cooperation between the parties: “I believe that the trilateral summit in the Turkmen capital will take place at the initiative of Mirziyoyev, where he expects to convince his colleagues to join the agreement.”
On the other hand, continues Stanislav Pritchin, senior researcher at the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at IMEMO RAS, this group of states is dissatisfied with Astana’s transit policy. “Kazakhstan periodically creates artificial problems at the border for transit traffic. Uzbekistan also secretly competes with its northern neighbor for the title of the main logistics center in the region,” the expert said. Logistics issues, according to the expert, and the construction of bypass routes in the region are likely to be among the main ones on the negotiation agenda.
Trans-Afghan Railway Project
The estimated cost of the project ranges from $5 billion to $8.2 billion. It was first announced in 2018. In September 2021, the parties planned to begin construction of the highway. But after the seizure of power in Afghanistan by the Taliban in August 2021, the implementation of the project slowed down. The parties began practical work on the construction of the trans-Afghan Termez-Peshawar railway from July 2022. On June 15, at a session at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, First Deputy General Director of Russian Railways Sergey Pavlov said that Russia was ready to help in the construction of the railway. If the project is launched in full force, then goods from Uzbekistan to Pakistan can be delivered in 3-5 days instead of 35 days at present.
According to Pritchin, the heads of state will also discuss the problem around the Amu Darya River, one of the main sources of water for downstream countries. The expert recalled that since March last year, Taliban-controlled Kabul, without prior consultations with the states of the region, began the construction of a large irrigation canal Kush-Tepa in the north of the country: a sub-regional association is needed.”
On July 18, a delegation of the Uzbekistan Temir Yollari company, together with the railway administrations of Pakistan and Uzbekistan, signed a protocol in Islamabad on the construction of the Trans-Afghan railway line. The 573 km highway is intended to connect the Uzbek railway network with Pakistani railways through Afghanistan with a transit potential of up to 20 million tons of cargo per year. At this stage, the project of the trans-Afghan railway, according to Tolipov, is difficult to implement: “The construction of a transport corridor has been discussed since the late 1990s, but nothing has changed since then. It is still not safe in Afghanistan, and there are occasional armed clashes between different groups.”
[ad_2]
Source link
