The Pipeline Politics

Dawn, May 8, 2005
Delhi insists on pipeline plan

NEW DELHI, May 7: India will not be deterred by US 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 4.5 billion dollar gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan began in 1994 but little headway was made because of tensions between Pakistan and India.

But against a backdrop of easing tensions between the two neighbours, Indian Oil Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer said in February he had won cabinet approval for resuming talks on the 2,600km overland pipeline.

Mr 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,” Mr Singh said. The minister said New Delhi would proceed with the project despite Washington’s reservations made known by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a visit here in March.

Ms 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 US official added.

In the interview with the newspaper, the Indian foreign minister also said a peace dialogue with Pakistan on their long-running dispute over 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,” Mr Singh said referring to the insurgency in held Kashmir.—AFP