Pakistan to India: Will ensure safety of IPI pipeline

Ammar Zaidi
Cancun, Apr 1 (PTI) Seeking to coerce India into joining
the much-discussed gas pipeline from Iran, Pakistan Thursday
said it will guarantee safety of the pipeline and may give New
Delhi an equity stake in the section passing through its
territory as additional surety of safe delivery of the fuel.
With New Delhi boycotting formal talks for almost three-
years, Iran and Pakistan this month signed last of a series of
agreements for implementing the project on bilateral basis.
Islamabad insists the agreements have "in-built" mechanism to
accommodate India should it decide to join the project.
"We (the State of Pakistan) will stand guarantee for safe
delivery of gas (at Pakistan-India border)," Mohammed Chaudhry
Ejaz, Additional Secretary in Pakistan´s Ministry of Petroleum
and Natural Resources, told PTI in an interview here.
Of the 1,035-km length of the pipeline in Pakistan, only
100-odd km would be exclusively for carrying gas to India
while the rest would be transporting fuel for both Pakistan
and India.
"We have up to nine hours of power outages and we need
Iranian gas to bridge this rising deficit. It is in our
interest that the pipeline is safe and we get the gas to
generate power and fuel industries," he said.
India was widely believed to have decided not to pursue
the project after the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai with
apprehensions being expressed about terrorists holding the
pipeline hostage to their demands and even cutting supplies by
blowing the pipeline to hurt the interest of world's second
fastest growing economy.
New Delhi, however, has not officially called it quits
yet and is proposing talks with Iran to sort out impediments.
It wants to take custody of gas, that triggers payments for
the fuel, only at Pakistan-India border to make Iran
explicitly responsible for safe passage of gas through
Pakistan.
Also, it wants gas utility Gas Authority of India Limited
(India) to take a stake in the 1,035-km pipeline section in
Pakistan to make the project bankable, reduce the financing
cost, ensure timely execution and ensure transparent and
efficient management of the operations.
"Yes, we will more than welcome India to join the project
length in Pakistan," Ejaz said when asked if Islamabad was
open to India taking stake.
He said Pakistan in July 2009 signed a Gas Sale and
Purchase Agreement and this month signed among other pacts a
Gas Transportation Agreement, which has been notorised in
Paris, provides for internationally acceptable transit
arrangement for gas to be supplied to India. MORE PTI