NEW SILK ROAD

Turkey, Georgia and Armenia have sealed an agreement to build a railway which would improve cargo transportation among the countries and eventually revive the historic Silk Road trade route -- linking Europe and Asia.

The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan travelled to the Georgian capital Tbilisi last Wednesday, Feb. 7, to sign the three-way agreement with his counterparts, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. The three agreed that construction on the railroad would start this year and should be finished by 2009. It will consist of a new 100-kilometer railway line connecting the eastern Turkish city of Kars with Georgia, while another 300 kilometers of existing track will be renovated.

The governments hope this railway will connect eventually to the proposed Trans-Asian Rail Network, which is being supported by the United Nations. Transport ministers from Turkey, China, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan met last year to discuss the project, which could one day see passengers taking a train from London to China.