DUSHANBE, May 12, 2016, Asia-Plus – Tajik President Emomali Rahmon yesterday met here with Kyrgyz Prime Minister Sooronbai Zheenbekov, who arrived in Tajikistan to attend the launching ceremony of CASA-1000 Power Project.
According to the Tajik president’s official website, President Rahmon noted that Tajikistan was interested in sustainable cooperation with Kyrgyzstan and would use all resources and opportunities to promote further expansion of it.
In the course of the talks, the two sides noted that the Central Asia South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade (Casa-1000) Project would play a constructive role in development of regional interstate relations, especially in the process of expansion of energy cooperation between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and create all necessary conditions for strengthening of friendly relations between the two countries in other sectors being of mutual interest.
Rahmon and Zheenbekov reportedly also exchanged views on ways to promote further development of a two-way trade between their countries and provide regional security.
As it had been reported earlier, an official visit of Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev to Tajikistan that was supposed to begin yesterday has been postponed for unknown reasons. 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.
