Agence France Presse
May 29

Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov hopes to agree terms with his Iranian and Afghan counterparts at a meeting next month in Tehran on building a road from his landlocked Central Asian country to the Gulf, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

But confirmation of the June 17-19 meeting between Karimov, Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami and Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, will only come once disagreements have been ironed out over the road’s route through war-torn Afghanistan, Uzbek foreign ministry spokesman Ilkhom Zakirov said.

“The government of Iran insists on having the shortest amount of road on the territory of Afghanistan” while Uzbekistan would prefer a more southerly route perhaps eventually linking with Pakistan’s Arabian Sea port of Karachi, Zakirov told AFP.

Uzbekistan has much of the resources needed to build a section of the road between the Uzbek border town of Termiz across northern Afghanistan as far as Herat, Zakirov said. Help might also be sought from the international fund set up to aid the reconstruction of Afghanistan after US-led forces toppled Afghanistan’s Taliban regime in 2001, he added.

Adding a rail link to the Iranian section of the proposed road is also under discussion, Zakirov said.

Rail tariffs through Uzbekistan’s main trade partner Russia have steadily fallen in recent years but diversifying transit links remains a priority for Uzbekistan, which is far from world shipping routes, Zakirov said. Uzbekistan has already negotiated a deal to assist with the construction of a road through its eastern neighbour Kyrgyzstan to China, he said.

Bodies such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have said that protectionist economic policies and poor cooperation with neighbours are key obstacles to be overcome if Uzbekistan, a country of some 24 million people, is to achieve economic stability.

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