The United States has allocated from 30 to 40 million dollars to build a road bridge over the river that separates Afghanistan and the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan, the US embassy in Dushanbe said Thursday.
US ambassador to Tajikistan, Richard Hoagland, signed an agreement on the construction of the bridge with the country's Transport Minister Abdu Dzhalil Salimov on Wednesday.
Work on the US-financed bridge linking the Afghan and Tajik banks of the Pyandzh river is to start soon and is expected to be completed within 18 months, the embassy said.
The project, whose cost was earlier estimated at 12 million dollars, will be directed by US military engineers.
The bridge will be a major contribution to the development of economic ties between Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Iran, according to the Tajik transport ministry.
It will also help speed up post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan by permitting faster travel of humanitarian convoys from Tajikistan, it said.
Tajikistan, a poor former Soviet republic, provided support for the US-led military campaign that overthrew the Taleban regime in Afghanistan in late 2001 and has been a staging post for the delivery of international aid.
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