DUSHANBE, May 11, 2016, Asia-Plus – An official visit of Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev to Tajikistan that was supposed to begin today has been postponed for unknown reasons, an official source in the Tajik government told Asia-Plus in an interview.
According to him, Prime Minister Sooronbay Zheenbekov will represent Kyrgyzstan in an official launch of the regional power transmission project, CASA 1000, which aims to export electricity from hydropower plants in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As it had been reported earlier, a new package of cooperation documents was expected to be signed in Dushanbe during Kyrgyz president’s visit to Tajikistan, including an agreement on mutual border between the two countries, the source said.
The two countries have been unable to agree on the location of the border they inherited when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. They have delimited only about half of the 971 kilometers. As the population in the dense Ferghana Valley grows, it has become increasingly difficult to demarcate the contested sections, where valuable agricultural land often lies.
The latest skirmishes sparked by a territorial dispute between residents along the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border escalated on August 4, 2015 leaving several people injured and damaging multiple homes.
The area at the focus of this and much previous unrest lies on the jagged frontier where the east of Tajikistan’s Sughd province and Kyrgyzstan’s Batken province meet.
