A 60-year-old rail link between northern Iraq and Syria, suspended in 1981, is to resume service on August 11th, an Iraqi official announced on Tuesday.
Ghassan Abdelrazek al-Ani, director general of the State Enterprise for Iraqi Railways, said the train would run once a week between Mosul and Aleppo, some 350 kilometres (210 miles) north of Damascus.
It will take a full 14 hours for the 510-kilometre (300-mile) journey, he said, quoted by the official news agency INA. A one-way ticket will cost 10,000 dinars (five dollars).
The train will be air-conditioned and equipped with sleeper cars, said Ani, giving an assurance that customs procedures for travelers on the line built in 1940 would be easy and swift at the border.
Trains are the cheapest means of transportation in Iraq, which has been under sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. But due to the embargo, the railways have been left without signals and trains are forced to drive slowly.
Syria and Iraq severed their ties amid Syrian support for Iran in its 1980-1988 war with Iraq.
But the Arab neighbors took a first step toward rapprochement in 1997, opening their border to businessmen, and in March 2000, Baghdad opened an interest section in Damascus.
In 1998, Syria and Iraq signed a deal to reopen the pipeline connecting the Kirkuk oil field in the north of Iraq with the Syrian port of Banias on the Mediterranean.
The head of Iranian railways said on July 22nd that Iran and Syria were to hold talks with Baghdad, after having agreed on rail links between the two countries passing through Iraq as well as Turkey -- BAGHDAD (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
