BEIJING: China and Pakistan will look at extending their $57 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday, part of China’s ambitious Belt and Road plan linking China with Asia, Europe and beyond.
China has tried to position itself as a helpful party to promote talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan, both uneasy neighbors ever since Pakistan’s independence in 1947.
Their ties have been poisoned in recent years by Afghan accusations that Pakistan is supporting Taliban insurgents fighting the US-backed Kabul in order to limit the influence of its old rival, India, in Afghanistan.
Pakistan denies that and says it wants to see a peaceful, stable Afghanistan.
Speaking after the first trilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Wang said China hoped the economic corridor could benefit the whole region and act as an impetus for development.
Afghanistan has urgent need to develop and improve people’s lives and hopes it can join inter-connectivity initiatives, Wang told reporters, as he announced that Pakistan and Afghanistan had agreed to mend their strained relations.
“So China and Pakistan are willing to look at with Afghanistan, on the basis of win-win, mutually beneficial principles, using an appropriate means to extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan,” he added.
How that could happen needs the three countries to reach a gradual consensus, tackling easier, smaller projects first, Wang said, without giving details.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif said his country and China were “iron brothers,” but did not directly mention the prospect of Afghanistan joining the corridor.
“The successful implementation of CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) projects will serve as a model for enhancing connectivity and cooperation through similar projects with neighboring countries, including Afghanistan, Iran and with central and west Asia,” he said.
India has looked askance at the project as parts of it run through Pakistan-administered Kashmir that India considers its own territory, though Wang said the plan had nothing to do with territorial disputes.
China has sought to bring Kabul and Islamabad together partly due to Chinese fears about the spread of Islamist militancy from Pakistan and Afghanistan to the unrest-prone far western Chinese region of Xinjiang.
As such, China has pushed for Pakistan and Afghanistan to improve their own ties so they can better tackle the violence in their respective countries, and has also tried to broker peace talks with Afghan Taliban militants, to limited effect.
A tentative talks process collapsed in 2015.
Wang said China fully supported peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban and would continue to provide “necessary facilitation.”
The Belt and Road infrastructure drive aims to build a modern-day “Silk Road” connecting China to economies in Southeast and Central Asia by land and the Middle East and Europe by sea.
China, Pakistan to look at including Afghanistan in $57 bln economic corridor
China, Pakistan to look at including Afghanistan in $57 bln economic corridor
Work suspended on Riyadh’s massive Mukaab megaproject: Reuters
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has suspended planned construction of a colossal cube-shaped skyscraper at the center of a downtown development in Riyadh while it reassesses the project's financing and feasibility, four people familiar with the matter said.
The Mukaab was planned as a 400-meter by 400-meter metal cube containing a dome with an AI-powered display, the largest on the planet, that visitors could observe from a more than 300-meter-tall ziggurat — or terraced structure —inside it.
Its future is now unclear, with work beyond soil excavation and pilings suspended, three of the people said. Development of the surrounding real estate is set to continue, five people familiar with the plans said.
The sources include people familiar with the project's development and people privy to internal deliberations at the PIF.
Officials from PIF, the Saudi government and the New Murabba project did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Real estate consultancy Knight Frank estimated the New Murabba district would cost about $50 billion — roughly equivalent to Jordan’s GDP — with projects commissioned so far valued at around $100 million.
Initial plans for the New Murabba district called for completion by 2030. It is now slated to be completed by 2040.
The development was intended to house 104,000 residential units and add SR180 billion to the Kingdom’s GDP, creating 334,000 direct and indirect jobs by 2030, the government had estimated previously.
(With Reuters)
