"The 21st century will see the revival of the Silk Road that ages ago connected Asia to Europe. Or rather, the revival of many cross roads as a great deal of sub regional routes of importance has been included in the ambitious Trans-Asian Railway Network project (TAR). Within a few years an intercontinental highway will link Shanghai and Rotterdam in South Holland, and this will be a windfall for landlocked-Central Asian countries whose access to regional and world markets rests on an efficient road system.
The Trans-Asian Railway Network, already romantically dubbed the “Iron Silk Road,” is the culmination of long and arduous efforts put forth by the United Nations Social and Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), a UN’s Bangkok-based organization. In 1959 the ESCAP initiated a project to lay down a pan-Asian railway network. But major armed conflicts and insurgencies in Southeast Asia during the Cold War period stalled the project’s progress"................LINK
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