Iran gas pipeline to go ahead: India
Iran gas pipeline to go ahead: India
Agence France-Presse, New Delhi
India will not be deterred by U.S. opposition to a multi-billion
dollar gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan as it is
imperative to meet the country's energy growing needs, the
foreign minister said in a report on Saturday.
"Our energy needs are going to increase exponentially in the
next 20 years and there's no other way but to have this kind of
an arrangement," Foreign Minister Natwar Singh said in an
interview with The Hindu newspaper.
Negotiations to build the US$4.5 billion gas pipeline from
Iran to India via Pakistan began in 1994 but little headway was
made because of tensions between Pakistan and India, which have
fought three wars since gaining independence in 1947 from
Britain.
But against a backdrop of easing tensions between the nuclear-
armed neighbors, Indian Oil Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer said in
February he had won cabinet approval for resuming talks on the
2,600-kilometer overland pipeline.
Aiyer also said he would visit Islamabad this month to discuss
the logistics of the pipeline linking Iran's South Pars gas field
to India via southwest Pakistan.
"Our petroleum minister is going to Pakistan very soon. The
earlier impression was that India was the stumbling block. We are
not," Singh said.
The minister said New Delhi would proceed with the project
despite Washington's reservations made known by U.S. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice during a visit here in March.
Rice offered talks on energy cooperation with India, which a
state department official later said would encompass civilian
nuclear power as well.
"It's a recognition that they (India) have enormous energy
needs. Their economy is going fast, they have a huge population,"
the U.S. official added.
In the interview with The Hindu, the Indian foreign minister
also said a peace dialogue with Pakistan on their long-running
dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir was showing
progress.
"The composite dialogue is going extremely well," he said
referring to official talks that resumed early last year.
"There is some terrorist activity going on," Singh said
referring to an Islamic insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir
that New Delhi says is actively encouraged by Islamabad, a charge
Pakistan denies.
"But the overall India-Pakistan scene looks more promising
than it has done for many decades," he said.
Singh also praised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf,
saying that without his "personal involvement," many confidence-
building measures, including the resumption of a bus link between
the two zones of Kashmir after a gap of almost 60 years, would
not have been possible.