Pashinyan: Armenia may start restoring railway with Azerbaijan

YEREVAN, November 24. /ARKA/. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said today that Russian President Vladimir Putin supported a project to restore the railroad link between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

"If there is no divergence from what we agreed upon yesterday (on the sidelines of a CSTO summit in Yerevan), the Armenian Crossroads project, particularly, the railroad restoration project, may require large investments, and it is good that we have such opportunities," Pashinyan said at a government meeting today.

He noted that international partners will show interest in this project in any case.

"We received certain signals during the talks with the Russian president, which means there is a realistic and serious possibility for us to start work on restoring the Horadiz-Meghri-Ordubad-Sadarak-Yeraskh railroad," the prime minister said.

According to the estimates of the Armenian Ministry of Economy, the construction of Yeraskh-Julfa-Ordubad-Meghri-Horadiz railroad may cost $1.2 billion. The construction of the 43-km long railway section through Armenian Meghri may require about $200 million. 

If this plan succeeds, Armenia will get access to Iran and Russia through this railroad, and Azerbaijan will get a railway connection with its exclave Nakhichevan through Armenia.

Yeraskh is a settlement in Armenia's Ararat region bordering Nakhichevan; Meghri is a town in Syunik (south of Armenia, bordering Iran and Azerbaijan). Sadarak, Julfa, Ordubad and Horadiz are towns in Azerbaijan.

Earlier, Pashinyan set up a working group to deal with the restoration of the railway tracks from Yeraskh to the border with Nakhichevan and across the Meghri sub-region of the southern Armenian province of Syunik. The 10-member working group is led by Artashes Tumanyan, a former ambassador to Iran. Tumanyan was to report on the progress of the work to the Prime Minister every three months.-0-