WASHINGTON: President Asif Ali Zardari and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai held a meeting with the World Bank president on Friday and agreed to facilitate electricity trade between Central and South Asian regions.

A joint declaration issued after the meeting said that President Zardari and President Karzai had also agreed to work with the World Bank to improve economic cooperation between the two regions. 

The two presidents and World Bank chief Robert Zoellick also discussed the development of a Central Asia-South Asia Regional Electricity Market and the Central Asia-South Asia (CASA) Transmission project. 

They noted that as a first step towards the development of this market, the CASA 1000 project would allow the export of surplus hydropower from Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic to South Asia during summer. 

Together with the government of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan an inter-governmental council was established in 2007 and a secretariat in 2008 with the objective of developing the electricity market and the CASA 1000 project. 

The four governments had also signed an inter-governmental agreement in August 2008 that expresses their commitments to the market and the CASA 1000 project. 

The two presidents noted that the development of a regional electricity market would beneficial to them and to the region. They agreed to continue to deepen their bilateral cooperation with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan for the development of two projects.