Russia sees connecting North-South Corridor with Northern Sea Route as practical step

GELENDZHIK, May 12. /TASS/. Connecting the North-South International Transport Corridor and the Northern Sea Route would be a practical step, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said in his address at the opening of the 6th Central Asian Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club. "Since the development of transport infrastructure plays a major role for Central Asian countries, their inclusion in the Greater Eurasian Partnership opens up new opportunities for increasing the connectivity of their internal territories and integrating into global supply chains," he said. "This primarily concerns the North-South International Transport Corridor, one of the key transport arteries of the Eurasian macroregion. In our view, it would be appropriate to consider options for linking this route with the arteries that connect the east and west, including the Northern Sea Route," Galuzin added. An intergovernmental agreement on the creation of the multimodal transport corridor North-South spanning 7,200 km was signed by Russia, India and Iran in 2000. Later, the number of participants rose to 14. The project is aimed at attracting transit of cargo flows from India, Iran and the Persian Gulf countries through Russian territory to Europe. Currently the project unites several various transport systems of separate countries. The Northern Sea Route is a shipping route and the main maritime communication channel in the Russian Arctic. It runs along the northern shores of Russia through the seas of the Arctic Ocean, connecting European and the country’s Far Eastern ports, as well as the mouths of navigable Siberian rivers, into a single transportation system. Its length is 5,600 km.