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TAPI important for peace in Afghanistan

28 March 2018 13:45 (UTC+04:00)
TAPI important for peace in Afghanistan

By Kamila Aliyeva

Turkmenistan offers to implement joint economic and social projects that will contribute to the peace process in Afghanistan, Deputy Foreign Minister Vepa Hajiyev said at a high-level international conference on Afghanistan “Peace Process, Security Cooperation and Regional Interaction” in Tashkent on March 27.

“We should create projects that must unite around all the influential forces of Afghanistan. It is this principle that should prompt the parties to a dialogue,” he said, RIA Novosti reported.

Turkmen official noted that the task of the conference participants is not only to sit the parties at the negotiating table.

“Today, the contribution of each country to the peace process is assessed through the prism of specific cases of establishing a peaceful life in Afghanistan,” he said.

Hajiyev noted that in the context of the implementation by the Turkmen side of a number of economic and socio-humanitarian projects for Afghanistan, the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, as well as the power transmission line and the fiber-optic communication line on the route Turkmenistan- Afghanistan-Pakistan is of great importance.

According to the Uzbek Foreign Ministry, the foreign ministers of Central Asian countries, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for Afghanistan Tadamichi Yamamoto, the head of the EU's Foreign Policy Service Federica Mogherini, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon took part in the conference in Tashkent.

The Russian delegation is represented by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In addition, Special Representatives for Afghanistan and Pakistan of Britain, Germany, Italy, Special Adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Special Envoy of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, high delegations of NATO, CSTO, France and the United Arab Emirates participated in the event.

The construction of the Turkmen section of the TAPI was launched in December 2015. Work on the Turkmen section is complete while work on the Afghanistan section of the pipeline project started last month in Herat – in the west of the country.

The pipeline will run from Galkynysh – the largest gas field in Turkmenistan – through the Afghan cities of Herat and Kandahar, and finally reach the Fazilka settlement located near the India-Pakistan border.

The total length of the pipeline is 1,814 kilometers, including 214 kilometers in the territory of Turkmenistan, 774 kilometers in Afghanistan, 826 kilometers in Pakistan to the settlement of Fazilka on the border with India. The project's preliminary cost is estimated at $10 billion.

Annual capacity of the gas pipeline will be 33 billion cubic meters.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

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