Only a two-kilometer stretch of Tajikistan’s common border with Uzbekistan still remains undelineated, an official source in the Tajik government told Asia-Plus in an interview.
According to him, this stretch is located at the junction of the borders of Tajikistan’s Sughd province and Uzbekistan’s Syrdarya region.
“There no any facilities or settlements in that area,” the source said, adding that the issue of that stretch would be officially solved during a state visit of Tajik President Emoali Rahmon to Uzbekistan, which is scheduled for early autumn this year.
Recall, the Tajik-Uzbek border delimitation talks had been stalled since February 2009 after Tajikistan rejected Uzbekistan’s proposal to give up some disputed lands to the Tajik side on condition that Tashkent will gain full control of “Farhod” water reservoir along the two countries border.
The first after a break of three yeas border talks between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan took place in Dushanbe on February 21-22, 2012. On April 24, 2015, top border officials of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan met in the Tajik northern city of Khujand to discuss issues around protecting common borders in 2014 and ways of improving the processes of doing so in future. In November 2016, a working group began reviewing solutions to definitively outlining the 16 percent of the 1,332-kilometer border still under discussion.
During a visit of Uzbek Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov to Dushanbe that took place on January 10 this year, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan agreed to visa-free travel and other border-crossing measures. The regulations also provide for the building of new checkpoints along the border and the opening of several bus links to connect the two nations' towns and cities. The sides also reached an agreement regarding the disputed dam of the Soviet-era Farhod hydropower station along the border. Under the accord, the land on which the station stands will be Tajik property, while the station itself — including its equipment and infrastructure — will be owned by Uzbekistan.
In late February this year, Tajik and Uzbek working groups on delimitation and demarcation of the mutual border met in Tashkent to prepare an annex to a government-to-government agreement between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on delineation of disputable stretches of the mutual border.
A government-to-government agreement between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on separate sections of the Tajik-Uzbek border was signed in Dushanbe during Uzbek president’s state visit to Tajikistan in March this year.
Tajikistan’s lower house (Majlisi Namoyandagon) of parliament (Majlisi Oli) is expected to ratify this agreement today.
