ASTANA (TCA) — Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov signed a strategic partnership treaty on April 18 in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, during the first day of a two-day visit by Turkmenistan’s president.
Nazarbayev called the document a “vital treaty of strategic partnership” and the “beginning of a new stage of development”.
Nazarbayev also said that Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan “will be the only two countries” in Central Asia that will not have “border problems”.
Speaking to the media after talks with Nazarbayev, the Turkmen president said that Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have agreed to consider in detail the measures to expand mutual trade, intensify the investment policy, enter into joint large-scale projects in industrial cooperation, in the service sector, and in the agricultural sector, official Turkmen media reported.
Berdymukhammedov spoke about the importance of partnerships between the business communities of the two countries. “We came to a common opinion on the need to increase interaction in this area in accordance with the existing powerful industrial and infrastructural potential of both countries, to develop in new, promising areas,” the Turkmen president said.
Berdymukhammedov said that strategic vectors of bilateral cooperation are energy and transport, as Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan occupy leading positions on the continent in terms of energy production. “We have a modern infrastructure, share a common vision of the configuration of energy and transport flows in Europe and Central Asia,” the Turkmen leader said, adding that large-scale projects with the participation of the two countries have already been implemented — the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline, part of which runs across the territory of Kazakhstan, and the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway.
