BEIJING, April 6: China plans to build 12 highways linking its desert northwest with Central Asia and regions as far as Turkey to boost trade, a government news agency said on Friday.

China has been steadily expanding trade with Central Asia since the Soviet break-up in the early 1990s.

The longest planned highway would stretch 1,680 kms from Urumqi in China's northwest through Tashkent, the capital of neighbouring Uzbekistan, to Mashhad in Iran and then Istanbul in Turkey, the Xinhua News Agency said.

That road is to be completed by 2010, the report said, citing the transportation department of China's north-western territory of Xinjiang. Other roads will link Xinjiang to Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, the report said.

A Chinese oil company also has constructed a pipeline from the northwest to Kazakhstan to import crude oil to China.—AP