Asian nations endorse plan for highway network to Europe

Asian nations endorse plan for highway network to Europe

Elaine Kurtenbach
Associated Press
Shanghai

Forty-five years after it was first proposed, a modern version
of the ancient Silk Road that once linked Asia with Europe is
taking shape - a 140,000-kilometer (87,500-mile) web of highways
and ferry routes that will again connect the two continents.

On Monday evening, 23 Asian nations signed a treaty on the
road system, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. China,
Japan and South Korea were among those endorsing the agreement.
Other Asian countries were expected to sign later.

The Asian Highway Agreement is intended to ensure construction
of a road system that would ease the isolation of many landlocked
Asian nations and establish a modern version of the ancient
trading route that once linked the continent to Europe by camel
train.

First proposed in 1959 but delayed by decades of Cold War
distrust, the project has been endorsed in principle by 32
countries.

Even as telecommunications links draw the world ever closer,
the realities of geography - enormous deserts, rugged mountain
ranges and impassable jungles - mean that many in Asia still live
in relative isolation.

The Asian Highway would be not one road but an entire system
of routes that - by land and by sea - would connect Tokyo to
Turkey, Bhutan to Bulgaria.

A U.N. map of the highways as planned roughly resembles a
spider web strung from Finland and St. Petersburg to Khabarovsk
and Tokyo. Spurs extend through Turkey as it meshes across
Central Asia, crosses India and loops through Southeast Asia down
to the Indonesian island of Bali.

Big nations like Japan, China, South Korea, Russia and India
would certainly benefit from the better trade links a unified
highway system would bring. But the project is also designed to
help smaller, landlocked countries gain coveted routes to sea
ports.

As envisioned, seven landlocked countries would be included:
Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal and
Uzbekistan. Island nations would be linked by ferry to the Asian
continent.

"We see the importance of constructing transport linkage
within the region in order to distribute development through all
countries, not only to the developed ones," Raj Kumar, an
economist for the Economic and Social Commission, said in a
statement.

The highway plan is part of a broader project to build up all
transport links in the region.

Most of the roads already exist but require upgrading to an
agreed-upon international standard - much like the United States
in the early 1900s, when smaller roads were cobbled together and
improved to form the federal highways U.S. 1 and Route 66. Signs
would be unified and border facilities improved to handle an
expected increase in traffic.

Since the 1990s, the project has gained support and its
projected length has doubled to the currently planned 140,000
kilometers (87,500 miles).

Though Beijing is a key proponent of the plan, so far the
potential Asian Highway routes through China total only 13,530
kilometers (about 8,500 miles). One would link Shanghai with the
border crossing with Pakistan; another would connect the border
with Mongolia to the north and Laos to the south.

So far, funding for most of the preliminary work on the Asian
Highway has come from Japan. Further financing is expected to
come from bigger nations participating, the World Bank and the
Asian Development Bank.

"The amount will be tremendous," Kim Hak-su, executive
secretary for the commission, said in a statement. "We propose
public-private partnerships to fund this effort if governments
cannot finance it."