DUSHANBE, January 22, 2013, Asia-Plus – Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are expected to approve the defined 40 kilometers of their common border until the end of this week.
Kyrgyzstan’s news agency, AKIpress, quoted Kurbanbai Iskandarov, Special Representative of the Kyrgyz Government for Border Delimitation Issues, as saying that negotiations with Tajik delegation will take place in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek on January 26.
The sides will reviewed the results of the past year’s work, draw a plan of actions for 2013 and discuss issues related to delimitation of Kyrgyz-Tajik border, including endorsement of the defined 40 kilometers of common border, Iskandarov was quoted as saying by AKIpress.
A total length of Tajikistan’s common border with Kyrgyzstan is 970 kilometers and about 567 kilometers (59 percent) of it has reportedly been defined at the level of working groups; of those 567 kilometers, 519 kilometers have already been endorsed.
We will recall that Tajik Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi told journalists in Dushanbe on January 18 that they are studying all documents regarding our borders with neighboring countries that were just administrative borders in Soviet times. According to him, he asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to help Tajikistan get historical documents related to borders between former Soviet republics in Central Asia.
The documents are needed to clarify Tajikistan’s borders with neighboring Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in order to prevent problems like those experienced in Uzbekistan’s Sokh exclave in Kyrgyzstan, Tajik minister noted.
Parts of the borders between the five Central Asian republics that were established by Soviet authorities are still disputed.
