Turkey to supply Syria with 1.4 billion kilowatts of electricit

Friday, October 6, 2006

DAMASCUS - The Associated Press

Turkey will supply Syria with 1.4 billion kilowatts of electricity over a period of one year, beginning next week, in an agreement signed on Wednesday, Syria's official news agency (SANA) reported.

The agreement, which is renewable annually, was signed here by Mohammed Abu Jaish, head of the state-owned Electricity Company in Syria and Hacı Duran Gökkaya of the Turkish Electricity Company.

Turkey's Birecik power plant will begin providing electricity to Syria Oct. 11, SANA said. It did not give the financial details of the deal.

Ties between Syria and Turkey were strained for much of the 1980s and 1990s when Turkey accused Syria of harboring terrorist Abdullah Öcalan, and Syria said Turkey's building of a series of dams was restricting the flow of water down the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.

But relations improved after 1998 when Syria, bowing to Turkish pressure, expelled Öcalan who was later captured and imprisoned in Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to Damascus in December, 2004, when he signed a trade pact with Syrian officials and agreed to allow additional water to flow into Syria helped restore neighborly ties.