07.07.03

Kuchma calls for including GUUAM corridors in global transportation system

It is necessary to step up efforts to ensure the efficient operation of transportation corridors within the GUUAM association and their inclusion into European and global transportation systems.

Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma made this statement while speaking at a plenary session of the delegation heads from the GUUAM signatories in Livadia Palace outside Yalta on Friday.

GUUAM comprises Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova. Kuchma said he is convinced that GUUAM should take an active part in setting up the Southern Transportation Corridor on the basis of pan- European transportation corridor No. 5, extending it to the east to connect it to Eurasian corridors, including TRASECA.

In developing transportation corridors within GUUAM, the implementation of a project to build a Eurasian oil transportation corridor "is assuming strategic significance," Kuchma said.

"This project is important not only for improving economic cooperation between the GUUAM member-states. In the context of EU enlargement, the problem of steady supplies of energy resources to Europe through an optimal route not requiring excessive economic costs becomes especially significant," he said.

In this connection, the prospect of transporting Caspian oil through the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline is becoming "more and more appealing" for European countries, he said. The unification of the TRASECA system, the Eurasian oil transportation corridor, the Gdansk-Odessa corridor, and the Crete corridors into a single transportation system will help create "real conditions for a combined sea-to-land scheme of cargo transportation towards the Baltic, Black, and Caspian Seas via the shortest route," he said.

The Ukrainian president said that the year 2002 "became the most productive" in the history of the association. "Finally, the organizational phase of GUUAM's development is over," he said.

(Interfax)