YEREVAN, DECEMBER 23, NOYAN TAPAN. The idea of building an Iran-Armenia railway was discussed once again at the recent sitting of the Armenian-Iranian intergovernmental commission in Tehran, and Iran expressed a willingness to build a raliway from the Iranian city of Tabriz up to the Armenian border, the co-chair of the commission, Armenian minister of energy and natural resources Armen Movsisian said at the December 22 press conference. In his words, Armenia is now carrying out work on finding financing sources for construction of the railway's Armenian section. It was mentioned that various schemes of constructing the Armenian section and the opportunities of participation of various investors in the construction are being discussed. The minister expressed an opinion that solutions will be found in 2009. As the Armenian minister of transport and communication Gurgen Sargsyan stated earlier, out of three versions of constructing the Armenian section of Armenia-Iran railway, the version of a 447-km railway is most preferable. In case of two other versions, the railway will be either 373 km or 443 km long. Each of the three versions envisages constructing a railway from the border of the two countries to Jermuk, and by the preferable version, it will go through Selim mountain pass, Martuni, Gavar and up to the operating Gagarin station. In the minister's opimnion, it will take 5 years to build the railway. It should be mentioned that an agreement on allocation of a one million dollar grant by the Asian Development Bank to Armenia was signed recently, by which design work of the indicated railway and a motorway to be built in parallel will be done. According to experts, construction of Armenia-Iran railway will cost 1.5-2 billion dollars.

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