SCR ready to restore Gyumri-Kars section in one month
24.05.2012,
16:36
The South Caucasian Railways (SCR) is ready to restore part of the railway stretching from Armenian Gyumri to Turkish Kars and will do it in one month if a political decision to open the Armenian-Turkish border will be made, Viktor Rebets, the chief executive officer of the Russian-run SCR said today.
YEREVAN, May 24. /ARKA/. The South Caucasian Railways (SCR) is ready to restore part of the railway stretching from Armenian Gyumri to Turkish Kars and will do it in one month if a political decision to open the Armenian-Turkish border will be made, Viktor Rebets, the chief executive officer of the Russian-run SCR said today. Speaking at a news conference at Novosti Armenia international press center he said there are no constraints on this side of the border.
He said the section was examined a month ago and its current technical condition suggests the possibility of restoring it in a short period of time.
The railway from Gyumri to Kars was built during the Russian Empire. The last freight train crossed the Turkish-Armenian border on July 6, 1993. A few days later, the border between Turkey and Armenia was closed by Ankara in a show of support for its ally, Azerbaijan, which had a dispute with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, the ethnic Armenian enclave of Azerbaijan. There are several sensitive issues complicating the establishment of normal relations between the two countries, particularly, Ankara’s blatant support of Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution process and Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the mass killings of Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman Empire as a genocide. -0-
