Tajik Pundit Urges Authorities to Declare Water “National Wealth”

Tajik expert Sayyof Mirzo has urged the authorities to declare water national wealth and use it for the benefit of the country.

In an article entitled “Who will build Roghun?” published by the Tajik newspaper Nigoh on 28 August, Sayyof Mirzo said that the Roghun hydroelectric power station, which is being built in central Tajikistan, might become a bone of contention among Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states in the coming years.

He said the main issue in the dispute between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan over the construction of the power station was water but not the construction of the power station itself.

“Tajikistan should draw the international community into this dispute and prove that `water is national wealth, like gas and oil,’” Sayyof said. “If we do not succeed in doing this, nobody will help us build the Roghun hydroelectric power station. Nor will they even allow us to build it”, Sayyof said.

He also said: “Serious attention is being paid to the construction of Roghun within the SCO. Why? How can a hydroelectric power station, let us say even if it is of great significance, be a goal of several great powers at the same time? Probably the goal is not electricity, but drinking water… That is to say the main goal is water. We want it or not the government of Tajikistan must say this,” Sayyof said.

(Report ran to 500 words; no further processing planned)

Originally published by Nigoh, Dushanbe, in Tajik 28 Aug 09 p3.

(c) 2008 BBC Monitoring Central Asia. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.