India will be invited to help with a key railway project in Afghanistan during Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s visit to New Delhi in the coming week on Sunday.

The railway, almost 650 km in length, which will connect Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat cities and will later be extended to Kabul, is a major project agreed to by President Ashraf Ghani and President Mirziyoyev last year.

Many of the preliminary surveys for the project have already been completed.

“We support a greater presence of India in Central Asia, and hope for some benefits of that for Afghanistan. I hope that negotiations with PM Modi will open a new page in our bilateral relations,” Special Assistant for Foreign Affairs Ilhom Nematov said as quoted in a report by The Hindu.

“If India would be involved in [the railway line] construction, we would welcome them because of India’s proven record and experience, and because of its contribution to bringing peace to Afghanistan,” he said.

He said Uzbekistan has an interest in opening trade and connectivity routes all the way to the Indian Ocean.

The project, for which Uzbekistan has already pledged $500 million, could become another major regional connectivity project for India, after its construction of the Zaranj-Delaram Highway in Afghanistan and the Shahid Beheshti port in Chabahar, Iran.

India is also committed to building another rail route, from Chabahar to Zahedan on the Iran-Afghan border, and President Mirziyoyev is keen to join the transit trade agreement signed by India, Afghanistan and Iran.

The rail route to Herat, if extended to Kabul, would also link to India’s “air corridor”, allowing trade, especially dry fruits and agricultural produce to travel along the routes from India to Central Asia and back in much shorter time.

Uzbekistan has held talks with Iran, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and China, which is already running a rail route into Uzbekistan under the Belt and Road Initiative, for the same project in the past few months.

Making a pitch for talks between India and Pakistan, Nematov said Uzbekistan’s role in regional security is likely to grow as it will take over the Secretary Generalship of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in January 2019, the report said.

“I think that SCO is a good platform for India and Pakistan to talk at and to maybe work with other countries on how to bring peace,” he said as quoted by The Hindu.

President Mirziyoyev will also discuss peace efforts in Afghanistan and his offer of mediating talks between the Ghani government and the Taliban, during his visit to India, the report said.

In August, a Taliban delegation visited Tashkent and held talks with the president’s representative.

The report quoted officials as saying that more than 30 documents and agreements are expected to be signed during the visit.