We are building Silk Road to Europe via Iran, says president of pan-European Armenian organization

In an interview with Tert.am, the president of the Forum of Armenian Associations of Europe shared his vision of the new Silk Road project which he said is expected to connect Armenia to the European continent via Iran.

All the programs, elaborated in collaboration with former Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan’s cabinet are now going to be submitted to Karen Karapetyan, the newly appointed premier, Ashot Grigoryan said.

“Our holding, EU-Asia Business Financing Center, targets its efforts towards developing Armenia’s economy,” he said.

“Our programs cover not only Armenia but also its connections with Europe. Iran is collaborating with our company on the Slovakian government’s level, and the [collaboration] is developing very intensively. We have proposed Armenia as a transit route connecting Iran with Europe. That gives Armenia a maximum benefit it couldn’t have otherwise dreamed of. As for Iran, it pursues one interest: the Iran-Armenia-Poti railway, whose construction we are ready to fully fund,” he said, adding that the project is worth about 1 billion Euros.

“Aside from Poti, we have developed and are going to launch a new and very interesting logistic program to ship goods to Danube in sea-river cargo vessels. For that purpose, we are going to purchase a port. The interest for Slovakia is our plan to operate a huge network of storehouses to deliver the goods to [the EU] member states.

“The holding was founded to promote the EU-Asia cooperation with a special focus on the Iran-Armenia-Europe trend. What we are practically creating is a new Silk Road through Danube, instead of connecting Iran to Russia through Armenia (which Azerbaijan did by building a Silk Road). As for Iran, it has a direct route to India and China.”