| 08 Sep 2010 |
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China to Build $2b Railroad for Iran
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China tends to sign a $2 billion deal to build a railroad line in Iran in the first step of a wider plan to tie the Middle East and Central Asia to Beijing.
China's Railroads Minister Liu Zhijun, is expected to visit Tehran this week to seal the deal, according to Iranian Minister of Road and Transportation Hamid Behbahani.
"The final document of the contract has already been signed with a Chinese company and the Chinese minister will visit Iran on September 12 to ink the agreement," Telegraph quoted Behbahani as saying.
The new line will run from Tehran to the town of Khosravi on the border with Iraq, around 360 miles, passing through Arak, Hamedan and Kermanshah.
The route could link Iran with Iraq and even Syria as part of a Middle-Eastern corridor. That could also benefit the 5,000 Iranians who make pilgrimages each day to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq.
Nicklas Swanstrom, the executive director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said the contract to build the line was the first step for China to build an entire rail infrastructure for central Asia.
"It makes sense that if you build railroads in Iran, you then get deals to stretch the lines into central Asia," he said, referring to a "very concrete plan" to run a railroad from Iran through the landlocked countries of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and eventually to Kashgar in China, in a modern "silk route".
That line would give the central Asian states vital access to Iran's port of Chahbahar on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and could also eventually give China a vital overland freight route to Europe.
"For China, it could cut the cost of transporting goods to Europe by 5 percent or 6 percent," said Professor Swanstrom.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad raised the idea of the new railroad earlier this year at a summit in Tehran.
Transport ministers from Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Iran are expected to gather in Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, next month to firm up a deal for a 1,225-mile route. The Asian Development Bank is funding a feasibility study for the project.
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