sentences:  While the Gyumri-Tbilisi section remains Armenia's lifeline to the outside world, the Kars-Gyumri section has not been operational since 1993, when Turkey following the Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan closed the border with Armenia in support for the Azeris in the war with Armenia.Since the Kars–Gyumri section has not been in operation due to the closed Turkish-Armenian border, in April 2005, an agreement was signed to build a direct connection across the Turkish-Georgian border from Kars to Georgia's Akhalkalaki, and to rehabilitate the existing railways from Akhalkalaki to Tbilisi to Baku, thus creating the Kars–Tbilisi–Baku mainline.The European Union and the United States declined to assist in the financing or promoting of (but did "welcome") the new mainline because they saw it as designed to bypass Armenia, supporting instead the reopening of the Kars-Gyumri-Tbilisi railway line.