Kazakhstan Ambassador to Armenia sees no preconditions for  Russian-Chinese interests collision  in respect to Silk Road project

ArmInfo.Geographic location of Kazakhstan is not much better than Armenian. The difference is the territories surface and the abilities to adopt fast changing  conditions.  Such an opinion was  stated to ArmInfo by Timur Urazaev, the Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary of Kazakhstan to Armenia. 

 "Kazakhstan has no exit to the open sea, except intercontinental  Caspian sea. And al this happens under conditions when main trade  paths  are  the marine routes. Armenia has similar geographic  location. In this meaning, we should improve and develop  the options  we have, i.e. transportation routes that could be integrated in  intercontinental corridors," he mentioned. 

As an example, the diplomat mentioned the  Great Silk Road, which has  at least two  options: first is American -  "New Silk Road", has been  frozen at the very beginning, due to the lack of funding.  The second  initiative is Chinese  - Economic Belt of the Silk Road, which  assumes the development of infrastructure, economic environment,  defined projects throughout the Great Silk Road. And all these -  through the territories of China, India, Central Asia, Russia and  Caucasus and with the exit to Europe.  Urazaev considers as natural  the existence of geopolitical components there, whre good investment  opportunities exist for infrastructure development.  And there, where  geopolitical processes raise obstacles for normal development of  intercontinental corridors, everything goes wrong. As the example,  Urazaev notes the Southern Caucasus with its problems, mentioning  that Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan try to build up their  Norht-South road to integrate to the West-East corridor.  

In this meaning, Urazaev estimates the Great Silk Road  not only as  the exit to Global Ocean, because he thinks that even without this  exit essential results could be reached in respect to Kazakhstan  products shipments to large Asian markets of Vietnam, Philippines,  Indonesia etc. both by marine and land paths. He stated also that  very soon the speed of cargo transportation from western borders of   Kazakhstan to western coast of China will decrease down to 24 hours.   "And there are no preconditions for Russian-Chinese interests  collision around this project. Right opposite there is a will and  intention to come together, to go one way. The only detail is that  cargo could vary. One part  of  shipments will go through Russian  territory, the other - through Kazakhstan. All these issues will be  agreed, of course," the Ambassador summarized