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India, Iran agree to push for deal on gas pipeline pact
NEW DELHI
Petroleumworld.com, April 30, 2008Iran said Tuesday it hoped to finalise a gas pipeline deal with fuel-starved India "in the near future", stressing the much-delayed project was more than just a commercial agreement.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he held detailed talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh including "positive" discussions on the petroleum natural gas project.
"The talks were positive and we hope that in the near future we will finalise the project," Ahmadinejad, speaking through an interpreter, told a news conference after a one-day visit to New Delhi.
He said the 7.5-billion-dollar project, which aims to transport natural gas from Iranian oilfields to Pakistan and India, was not just a commercial deal as India and Iran "shared common roots and had deep historic and cultural ties."
"This is a very important, very immense project -- not only the pipeline but the very issues involved in this programme have social, economic and political ramifications for both our countries," he after visiting South Asian neighbours Pakistan and Sri Lanka this week.
The project was mooted in 1994 but stalled by disputes over prices and transit fees.
Indian foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon sounded upbeat after the meetings. "Its doable," he told reporters in a separate brief.
"We not only need to treat it as a commercial deal because it is much more than a commercial deal," the top Indian diplomat said.
"I think we need to see it also in terms of its potential as a confidence-building measure between the three countries and therefore we need to do things, find ways of assuring supply," he said.
"This is a pipeline that will hopefully last for 40 years... Price is only a small part of this," he added in an apparent reference to issues of transit costs and pricing.
Indian and Pakistani energy ministers met in Islamabad last Friday and said they had made "significant progress" in discussions on transit fees and were hopeful work could start next year.
On Monday, Iran and Pakistan also said they had ironed out hurdles delaying the 2,600-kilometre (1,615-mile) scheme during a stopover by Ahmedinejad in Islamabad on the first leg of his whirlwind South Asia tour.
India in 2005 signed another deal with Iran, which has the world's second largest known gas reserves after Russia, for the supply of five million tonnes of gas annually for 25 years.
However that agreement, estimated at over 20 billion dollars, has also stalled over price disputes.
India has been under pressure from the United States not to do business with Iran, viewed in Washington as a state sponsor of terrorism and seen as bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.
But India, which imports more than 70 percent of its energy needs, has been trawling for new supplies of oil and gas while ramping up domestic production to sustain its booming economy.
Last week new Delhi told the US not to interfere in its dealings with Iran after a State Department spokesman said Washington would like India to put pressure on Ahmadinejad over his nuclear programme.
India on Tuesday said Iran had the right to peaceful use of nuclear energy but asked Tehran to cooperate with the United Nations nuclear watchdog.
Ahmedinejad and Singh had a "short discussion on" the nuclear issue Tuesday, Menon said.
India, which tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and is yet to sign the non-proliferation treaty, had a "very clear" view on the situation, he added.
The IAEA has said it is unable to confirm the nature of Iran's nuclear programme and complained that Tehran has defied repeated UN Security Council ultimatums to suspend uranium enrichment.
Tehran insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and aimed solely at generating energy but the West fears it could be seeking an atomic weapon.
Menon also said India and Iran also agreed to triple bilateral trade to 30 billion dollars "in the next few years" from the current 10 billion dollars -- mainly through fuel imports.
Story by Pratap Chakravarty from AFP
AFP 29 1846 GMT 04 08
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