PYONGYANG, April 27. /ITAR-TASS/. Afghanistan will become a member of the Organization for Cooperation of Railways (known as OSJD in accordance with its Russian acronym), says a decision that was taken Sunday at a conference of the confederation of directors general of the railways of the organization’s member states in Pyongyang.
The scope of participating countries included Russia, China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Estonia, Mongolia, and another twenty countries, some of which have an observer status in the OSJD.
The Russian delegation was led by Vadim Morozov, first vice-president of the state railway corporation RZD.
A delegation from South Korea took part in the session of the OSJD directors general for the first time this year, in spite of highly complicated relations between the North and the South. DPRK Minister of Railways, Jon Kil-su, who made the final speech at the conference, pointed out a growth of collaboration between the signatory countries.
One of the main topics was a discussion of the OSJD plans for 2015 and subsequent years. The participants reviewed performance of the organization’s commissions for freight and passenger services, infrastructures and the rolling stock, encoding and digitalization, as well as financial issues and transactions in 2013.
The agenda also included a discussion on the repayment of debts among the railway companies of the participating countries.
OSJD supervises development of international freight and passenger transportation and the setting up of a common railway area in the Eurasian region. It facilitates technological progress and collaboration in science and research in the field of railway transport called upon to boost the competitiveness of the expansive network of Eurasian transcontinental routes, most of which are crucial to regional and global trade.