It is a canal project that in will put even the waterways of Panama and Suez in the shade.

President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan has set out proposals to dig a canal from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea to foster trade between Asia and Europe.

The Eurasia canal would stretch through the mountainous terrain of the Russian North Caucasus for 650km (405 miles) to link the two seas. Mr Nazarbayev has urged Moscow to back the plan and invited foreign companies to help to develop the project, which he estimated would take five years and $6 billion (£3 billion) to complete.

If it succeeds in attracting investors, the canal would be four times longer than the Suez link between the Mediterranean and Red seas and eight times the length of the Panama waterway connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The President argues that the canal would turn Kazakhstan into a sea power and bring benefits to other countries in Central Asia, which are rich in oil, gas and mineral resources but short on transport links to world markets.

He told a council of foreign investors in Kazakhstan that the project would be economically competitive as an export route for Central Asia and China because it would be 1,000km shorter than an existing canal system based on the Russian Volga and Don rivers.

Ships travelling from the Caspian to the Black Sea must go north up the Volga, then turn west into the Volga-Don Canal, southeast into the Don and on to the Azov Sea, which opens into the Black Sea.

The Eurasia plan may not be as forbidding as it first seems. About half of the distance of the proposed canal is already covered by navigable reservoirs built by the Soviet Union.

Mr Nazarbayev first suggested the idea at an economic forum in St Petersburg, Russia’s second city, this month. He described the canal then as “a powerful corridor providing an outlet for the whole of Central Asia to the sea via Russia”.

However, Russia is promoting an alternative plan to expand the existing Volga-Don route. The 101km canal linking the two rivers was dug on Joseph Stalin’s orders by thousands of forced prison labourers and opened in 1952.

Sergei Ivanov, the First Deputy Prime Minister, has urged foreign investors and neighbouring states to join the improvement scheme, saying that the Russian Government would not pay the estimated $5 billion construction cost byitself. “Joining the concession will turn Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan into maritime countries,” said Mr Ivanov, the leading contender to succeed President Putin next March.

Grand designs

A feasibility study has begun to see if water could pass from the Red Sea via a 200km canal through Jordan and Israel to restore the shrinking inland waters of the Dead Sea

The 360km Jonglei Canal in Sudan was designed to make better use of the Nile’s limited water. It was two thirds complete at the start of the 1983 civil war, when work stopped. Abandoned, it has become a hazard for game

Source: Times archives, WWF

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