DUSHANBE, November 25, 2009, Asia-Plus — Tajikistan assesses Uzbekistan’s withdrawal from the unified Central Asian power grid as political decision of Uzbek authorities.
The deputy head of the CIS directorate within the MFA, Khusrav Ghoibov, has voiced an official position of Tajikistan at a briefing in Dushanbe today.
“Of course, every country, taking into consideration its national interests, has the right to participate in those or other international agreements or stop its participation in them,” said Ghoibov, “Anyway, international law and civilized world do not allow such political decisions to hurt other countries or go against those traditions, those relations that were established between the peoples of the region due to common history and culture.”
According to him, Tajikistan has always come out for expansion of mutually beneficial economic, political and cultural cooperation with Uzbekistan and intends to develop its bilateral relations with Uzbekistan in the spirit of friendship, neighborliness and mutual respect in the future as well.
In the meantime, asked about retaliatory measures taken by Tajikistan against the neighboring country, Sergey Tkachenko, the deputy head of the control center within Barqi Tojik (Tajik electric systems) power holding, said, “Nobody is going to take any retaliatory measures.”
“However, since Uzbekistan withdraws from the unified Central Asian power grid and it has broken water-and-energy agreements, Tajikistan is forced to use water from its hydropower plants’ reservoirs to produce additional energy in order to meet its own needs. We will think, first of all, about this,” Tkachenko said.
He added that although Uzbekistan had stated that it would pull out of the unified Central Asian power grid on December 1, 2009, it actually withdrew from it on October 30 and since that time, Tajikistan’s electricity-distribution system has been operating independently from the unified Central Asian power grid.
We will recall that Uzbek Ambassador to Tajikistan, Shokasym Shoilsamov, announced at a briefing in Dushanbe on November 23 that Uzbekistan will withdraw from the unified Central Asian power grid on December 1. According to him, Uzbekistan has spent large funds to enhance its power systems and today it is ready to work in a separate regime. During the post-Soviet period, operation of the Central Asia power practically no coordination has been left that made the unified Central Asian power grid so vulnerable that separate participants began siphoning off electricity from it in their own interests out of control that has resulted in the grid malfunctioning, negatively impacting neighboring countries, Uzbek diplomat said.
