www.asiadaily.com Kazakhstan  is looking to make a part of the old Silk Road from China to Europe into a faster link for goods with a 3,000 km (2,000 miles) rail project.

The sprawling oil-rich country between China and the Caspian Sea has always been a hub on the ancient trade route which carried marvels of the orient like rich silks, tea and jade by horseback, mule and cart to the markets of Europe.

The proposed route would link Druzhba on the border with China's Xinjiang northwestern region to Iran and Turkey -- if Kazakhstan can get neighbours Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to upgrade their Soviet era railways - and then on to Europe.

"I am talking about a perhaps extravagant, maybe ambitious or highly ambitious project," Transport Minister Kazhmurat Nagmanov told parliament on Monday.

"We have the Silk Road in mind."

But a hangover from history is a major obstacle.

In the 19th century Russia extended its empire to Central Asia forcing all rail and road networks to point to Moscow and adopted a wider track to stop potential European invaders from using its railway system.

China and most of Europe use "standard gauge" tracks that are narrower than the broad gauge used by Kazakhstan and the rest of the former Soviet Union, hindering an easy link-up.

The solution would be to build extensive new sections of standard gauge track alongside existing lines, radically cutting the time it takes to transport Chinese goods to Europe.

Nagmanov said funding for the project would probably have to come from the private sector.

However, Kazakhstan has put relatively little of its booming oil and mineral wealth into infrastructure or social projects since the collapse of the Soviet Union and is one of the few countries the World Bank and IMF has encouraged to spend more.

"This project won't happen today or tomorrow but it is begging to be built," Nagmanov said.

Twenty-five countries agreed at a United Nations meeting in 1992 to try to link 80,000 km of railways into an Asian network and establish rail corridors to Europe.

A so-called northern route from China, through Mongolia or Kazakhstan, and then Russia to western Europe will become operational this year, according to the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).

Tests along that route last year showed it was possible to ship a container from Tianjin in China to Finland in 10 days, despite switching trains where the tracks did not match.