The Hindu : India, Iran, Afghanistan discuss new transit routes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 07, 2003

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India, Iran, Afghanistan discuss new transit routes

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

NEW DELHI Jan. 6. India, Iran and Afghanistan held a trilateral meeting in Teheran on January 4-5 to discuss alternative transit routes to Afghanistan as Pakistan refused to allow India access to the overland route to Afghanistan.

The Foreign Office spokesman said that the Minister of State for External Affairs, Digvijay Singh, led the Indian delegation to the talks, while Iran was represented by its Road Transport Minister, Ahmad Khorram and Afghanistan by its Trade Minister, Sayed Mustafa Kazemi.

The talks focused on how to operationalise the Chabahar-Melak-Zaranj-Dilaram route from Iran to Afghanistan. Chabahar is a port on the Iranian coast and is crucial to opening this alternative route. Iran, the spokesman said, planned to upgrade the Chabahar-Melak road and construct a bridge on the route to Zaranj.

India, he said, had already constructed a feasibility study on the 213-km Zaranj-Dilaram route, which it planned to construct. Iran, he maintained, would facilitate the entry of Indian equipment and the purchase of material for the section of the road to be constructed by India.

Atul Aneja reports from Manama (Bahrain):

According to highly-placed sources, the Iranian side is looking at diverting most of the trade to Afghanistan and Central Asia from Chabahar, located not far from its maritime border with Pakistan, while reserving the port of Bandar Abbas mainly for trade with Russia and Europe.

The development of this route would have major implications for Afghanistan, Iran and India.

Landlocked Afghanistan has so far been highly dependent on Pakistani ports for its trade. But access to Chabahar will give it more options to govern its overseas trade and lessen Islamabad's political leverage on it.

The Afghan Government is keen to lower its political and economic dependence on Pakistan, as its core is made up of the erstwhile Northern Alliance leadership that fought the Pakistan-backed Taliban regime.

Iran, with the new arrangement, is positioning itself as the custodian of new trade routes to Afghanistan, Russia and Central Asia. Iran has already engaged Russia and India to improve the North-South Corridor that can carry goods from India to southern Iran and thereafter across the Caspian Sea into Russia and Europe.

Iran, India and the Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan have also signed an agreement to transit goods from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas to Central Asia via Turkmenistan. Goods can be transferred either by road or rail as the Iranian and the Central Asian railway systems have been inter-connected since the mid-nineties.

For India, the Teheran meeting is seen as a consolidation of its post-Taliban Afghan policy in partnership with Iran and the new dispensation in Kabul. Iran, India, Russia and the Northern Alliance had earlier worked together in seeking the removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan and the Teheran meeting is seen as part of New Delhi's effort to add a new strategic dimension to this relationship.

The three sides also discussed the possibility of finding road access to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia, in case their cooperation can result in linking the Chabahar-Dilaram road to Afghanistan's proposed garland road system. The garland road system, which is likely to be set in motion under international supervision, envisages the construction of a web of inter-locking roads throughout Afghanistan.

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