THE TELEGRAPH: China is poised to sign a $2bn (£1.3bn) deal to build a railway line in Iran in the first step of a wider plan to tie the Middle East and Central Asia to Beijing.
China's railways minister, Liu Zhijun, is expected to visit Tehran this week to seal the deal, according to his Iranian counterpart, Hamid Behbahani.
"The final document of the contract has already been signed with a Chinese company and the Chinese minister will visit Iran on September 12 to ink the agreement," said Mr Behbahani.
The new line will run from Tehran to the town of Khosravi on the border with Iraq, around 360 miles as the crow flies, passing through Arak, Hamedan and Kermanshah.
Eventually, the Iranian government said, the route could link Iran with Iraq and even Syria as part of a Middle-Eastern corridor. That could also benefit the 5,000 Iranians who make pilgrimages each day to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq.
Nicklas Swanstrom, the executive director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said the contract to build the line was the first step for China to build an entire rail infrastructure for central Asia.
"It makes sense that if you build railways in Iran, you then get deals to stretch the lines into central Asia," he said, referring to a "very concrete plan" to run a railway from Iran through the landlocked countries of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and eventually to Kashgar in China, in a modern "silk route". >>> Malcolm Moore in Shanghai | Tuesday, September 07, 2010
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