Yazici hails silk road project

A two-day forum entitled the "Fifth International Forum on the Role of Customs Administrations on Promoting and Facilitating Trade among Silk Road Countries" was held in Istanbul last week and attended by a total of 27 delegations from 10 international organizations and 17 countries. The forum has been launched in 2008 by the Customs and Trade Ministry as part of a project aimed at providing facilities with regard to transportation and commerce on the Silk Road. Speaking on the sidelines of the forum, Customs and Trade Minister Hayati Yazici said that this was a project aimed at removing the walls which have been psychologically built among the Silk Road countries. Stating that strengthening the Silk Road will play a vitally important role in reviving that geography, Yazici said, "The Silk Road countries are like the links of a chain. The relations to be built among our countries with a broad perspective will change the fate of this geography dating back to 200 years. Now we are in the threshold of a new transformation. We are trying to revive the Silk Road this time with broad railway networks, transportation lines, energy corridors and natural gas pipelines." Yazici added that once the project is completed, great many of goods and means of production would be transferred from the Central Asia to Europe or from Europe to the Central Asia.