KHOROG, June 17, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- 20 participants in a race dedicated to the 12th anniversary of the National Unity Day that started in GBAO’s Murgab district on June 12 reached Khorog, the capital of Gorno Badakhshan o June 16.

Representative of the GBAO committee for youth, sports and tourism affairs, Amrali Faqirov, who headed the race, noted that the main objective of the race was to propagate ideas of peace and accord between the peoples of Tajikistan as well as health lifestyle.

“We have traveled some 400 kilometers from Murgab to Khorog and we have to make a 1000-kilometer journey from Khorog via Qurghon Teppa and Dushanbe to Khujand, where the main events to mark the National Unity Day will be held on June 27,” Faqirov said.

Next year, the celebrations to mark the National Unity Day will be held in Gorno Badakhshan.

The General Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and National Accord in Tajikistan that ended a five-year civil war in the country was signed in Moscow on June 27, 1997.

For the purposes of achieving peace and national accord in Tajikistan and overcoming the consequences of the civil war, inter-Tajik talks on national reconciliation were conducted from April 1994 to 1997 under the auspices of the United Nations.  Protocols that were agreed and signed in the course of eight rounds of talks between delegations of the Government of Tajikistan and the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), six meetings between the President of Tajikistan and the UTO leader, and also three rounds of consultations between the delegations of the sides in Almaty, Ashgabat, Bishkek, Islamabad, Kabul, Mashhad (Iran), Moscow, Tehran and Khusdeh (Afghanistan) constituted the General Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and National Accord in Tajikistan.