Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey have reached an agreement on key issues concerning the railway route from Kare (Turkey) to Baku via Akhalkalalki (Georgia) and Tbilisi (Georgia). “In the course of trilateral talks held in Baku yesterday, the drafts of three important documents were considered: a framework agreement on the project, the Georgian side’s obligations to allot land for the construction of the railway road, and a credit agreement between Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey, and on the whole an understanding was reached,” Azerbaijani Transport Minister Ziya Mamedov told journalists on Saturday. The three countries will finalise the document within a month and resubmit them. “The main corrections will have to be made in the credit agreement,” the minister said, adding, “Each party has its own project financing proposals.” According to Mamedov, Turkey has no objections and is ready to start implementing the project on its territory at the beginning of 2007. “We are now working with the Georgian side to make sure it can start building the railway road on its territory in the same period of time,” Mamedov said. He believes Georgia has an interest in this two-year project. The new railway route is estimated at 422 million U.S. dollars. It envisages the construction of a 105-kilometre road, including 29 kilometres in Georgia and 76 kilometres in Turkey, as well as the modernisaiton of a 150-kilometre section of the Georgian railway road. In the initial stage, the road will transport up to five million tones of cargos a year. But Mamedov says the new road will be of interest also to Kazakhstan and China, which are seeking to deliver their cargos to Europe by the shortest route. (Itar-Tass)