Kabul, Dec 27, IRNA -- Iran will along with five major Asian and European states help its neighbor, Afghanistan, renovate its poor transportation services.

Afghanistan has been given the pledge for delivery of some 615 buses, extension of transportation services in and outside its soil and easing its urban traffic load.

Some 400 of the buses are scheduled to be provided by India, 115 by Japan, 50 by Iran and 50 by Pakistan, said Afghan Transportation Minister Seyed Mohammad-Ali Javid in an exclusive interview with IRNA here on Friday.

Javid said Germany and Russia too have promised Kabul to extend related technology and know-how.

He said Iran had been asked to open transportation services representative offices in Afghan cities of Herat and Zarang.

Elaborating on his ministry's plans for easing traffic load in Afghan metropolitan cities, Javid said the ministry intended to improve transportation services in Afghan cities of Jalalabad, Herat, Qandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Shiberghan, and Talukan in near future.

Improper and poor transportation is not the only problem Afghanistan is facing with. Development of roads and highways, which serve as an infrastructure for high quality and better transportation, is a must.

Afghan roads have been turned bumpy and badly hit in the course of years of civil war and the US coalition war, launched in Afghanistan in the post-9/11 period with the theme of ousting rogue Taliban militia, reigning in the country almost for three consecutive years, and manhunting al-Qaeda Leader Osama Bin Laden -- the chief suspect in attacks on the New York-based World Trade Center twin towers and the Pentagon building in Washington -- and his followers.

A landmark conference, sponsored by the UN, was held in Bonn, Germany, in December, 2001, immediately after the US coalition war in Afghanistan, to decide an interim government in Afghanistan and rally financial aid packages by a group of donor states as well as support for post-Taliban Afghanistan. Iran alone raised a pledge of dlrs 560 million cash aid to help Kabul with its reconstruction drive.

Iran has announced its firm determination to contribute to Afghan development, including renovation of its roads as was testified by Iranian Roads and Transportation Minister Ahmad Khorram's keynote speech to a tripartite meeting on reconstruction of Afghan roads, that was held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on Thursday.

Khorram said Iran is ready to rebuild Afghan roads and main infrastructures, stressing the need for the World Bank, and the European and Asian development banks and other monetary institutions to finance the projects.

He said his ministry plans to work on a presumably two-year project for building a 300-meter bridge in Milak border region in less than seven months -- executive operations on the bridge have started for the past three months and it is to be operational in the next four months.

Khorram, Afghan Minister of Public Works Abdullah Ali and Uzbek Deputy Prime Minister for Transportation Affairs Rustam Yunosov signed a protocol at the end of the meeting, voicing their respective country's readiness to revive Afghan roads and build new roads in the country. Completion of the semi-finished project on development of Dogharun-Herat road north of Afghanistan and construction of Herat- Mazar-i-Sharif-Termez road are parts and parcels of the deal.