Tuzmen To Pay Visits To Ukraine And Syria

ANKARA - State Minister Kursad Tuzmen has said, ''we will pay visits to Ukraine and Syria this month together with Turkish businessmen. We are planning to hold Joint Economic Commission meeting with Ukraine and to sign Free Trade Agreement with Syria.''
Responding questions of the A.A correspondent on Tuesday, Tuzmen said, ''together with 150 exporters and contractors, we will pay a visit to Ukraine between February 24 and 27, 2004. During the visit, Turkey-Ukraine Joint Economic Commission meeting will be held. The meeting will focus on problems of Turkish businessmen acting in this country. Also, we aim at bringing together Turkish and Ukrainian businessmen to increase our mutual trade volume with Ukraine.
''Later, we will pay a visit to Syria. As you know, President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria paid an official visit to Turkey between January 6 and 8, 2004. During his visit, some projects including signing of a Free Trade Agreement were taken up. We believe that these projects would make an important contribution to further improvement of commercial and economic relations between Turkey and Syria,'' he said.
Reminding that considerable development had been recorded in commercial and economic relations between Turkey and Syria in recent years, Tuzmen said that Turkey and Syria had decided to establish border trade centers during visit of President Al-Assad of Syria.
''We are planning to increase mutual trade volume between Turkey and Syria up to 2 billion U.S. dollars in the coming years. Therefore, the two countries should sign a Free Trade Agreement. The partnership agreement between Syria and the European Union has prepared the necessary ground for the Free Trade Agreement to be signed between Turkey and Syria. We have presented a draft agreement to the Syrian side,'' he said.
Recalling that there were fertile lands in border region between Turkey and Syria, Tuzmen said, ''these lands will be purified from anti-personnel land mines and be prepared for organized agriculture. Meanwhile, the Syrian side has proposed to establish a free zone in the border region to develop joint production projects. This project will help us to market Turkish goods in Syria and in the other Arab countries.''
Stressing that Turkey-Syria-Iraq railway should be used more effectively in trade with Syria, Tuzmen said that the route could not be used due to high cost.
(UK-AÖ) 03.02.2004