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In session last week in Albania, the cooperation – comprised of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Albania, Turkey, Russia, Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine – agreed that the railway connection is vital for regional commerce.

The railway that runs from Kars (Turkey), to Gyumri (Armenia) to Tbilisi, is itself more than 100 years old and was built by Russian engineers for ensuring a stable link between two fortresses of the Russian Empire – Kars and Alexandropol (now Gyumri).

During the Soviet years the Kars-Gyumri railway was used predominantly for passenger transportation and was the only railway immediately connecting the Soviet Union with Turkey. It has theoretically preserved this significance until today, however it has been closed since 1992, when the blockade against Armenia was imposed by Turkey.

Ankara has insisted on removing the point on the necessity of the international recognition of the Armenian genocide from Armenia’s foreign policy agenda and on the “return” of Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan, as preconditions for lifting Turkey’s blockade.

Since last year, Ankara together with Tbilisi and Baku has been projecting an alternative way connecting Turkey with the Caucasus – the road of Kars-Akhalkalaki (Georgia)-Tbilisi, which is opposed by Yerevan. Armenia’s Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian stated recently that concessionaries have no moral right to isolate Armenia from the Council of Europe of which it is a part by wasting a huge sum of money, whereas there is a de facto existing road – Kars-Gyumri-Tbilisi.

Fifty-one U.S. congressmen also spoke against the building of a new railroad (instead of reopening the existing one). On November 15, U.S. Congress’s House of Representatives member Barney Frank appealed to the U.S. Government not to allocate funds for the construction of the Kars-Akhalkalaki road. The congressmen also addressed a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Earlier, representatives of the European Union had expressed a similar position.

But the PABSEC’s approval marks the first time an international organization made a decision about the restoration of the Kars-Gyumri railway link.

“I think that the resolution of the PABSEC is prompted by the new regional realities,” says political analyst Armen Poghosyan. “International structures spoke about the need to de-blockade this section of the railroad also before, however Turkey would not listen to them. Now that the issue of Turkey’s possible membership in the European Union is being discussed, it cannot but reckon with these proposals any longer.”

Interestingly, Turkey’s representative also spoke in favor of the opening of the Kars-Gyumri railway when the resolution was passed in Tirana on November 24. The head of the Armenian delegation to the PABSEC, chairman of the parliamentary standing commission for finance-credit and budgetary affairs Gagik Minasyan says that Yerevan’s proposal was based on the argument that the restoration of the railroad communication on the indicated route would immediately make it possible to link among themselves four regional states at a time. Members of the Azeri delegation did not participate in the vote.

Azeri delegates were absent from the PABSEC session because its legislature has not yet begun its new work following recent parliamentary elections.

“The Armenian delegation used this factor and put this issue to vote,” Shaitdin Aliyev claims.

The consent of the Turkish side to the operation of the Kars-Gyumri railway, in the opinion of many analysts, may have been connected not only with the pressure on Turkey from European structures. In particular, political analyst Andranik Mihranyan thinks that it is very important for Turkey itself: thereby it gets rid of the need to make excuses to the international community every time for the blockade it has imposed, and at the same time, it gets a possibility to develop economic activities in the most backward eastern regions of the country. Moreover, just opposite the town of Kars, in the city of Gyumri, Russia’s military base N102 is stationed, and the opening of such railway communication may pursue strategic goals as well. In the political analyst’s opinion, it is from this viewpoint that it is important to the United States.

Thus, the opening of the Kars-Gyumri railway communication currently meets the interests of practically all countries and organizations concerned, except Azerbaijan. Each of them, of course, has its own motives and goals. Nevertheless, official Baku states that this decision of the PABSEC has no legal force and promises to prove it shortly.

According to different international experts the railway could be reopened during one year.