Pipeline project: India agrees to meeting with Pakistan, Iran
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24/06/2008
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Business Standard (New Delhi)
India, Pakistan and Iran are likely to meet next month in Tehran to resolve differences over the $7.5-billion gas pipeline that was first proposed in 1994. Petroleum Minister Murli Deora met Iran's Oil Minister, Gholam Hosein Nozari, on the sidelines of a meeting of the world's oil producers and consumers in Jeddah on Sunday, and agreed to the proposal for a trilateral meeting in Tehran next month. "Most bilateral issues have been resolved... and now a trilateral meeting of the oil ministers of the three countries is mostly likely to take place in Tehran next month," said Petroleum Secretary MS Srinivasan who was present at the . meeting with Nozari. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee is also scheduled to visit Iran at the end of the month. Discussions on the pipeline are on his agenda also. During the last trilateral meeting in June last year, India and Pakistan had agreed on the basis for calculating the transport fees for India's share of the gas that would travel through Pakistan. The two countries, however, could not agree on the transit fee which India would have to pay Pakistan to ensure the safety of the gas pipeline in its territory. During last year's meetings, Iran had also wanted to introduce a clause in the agreement that would allow it to revise the price of the gas every three years. India and-Raki&tanJiad' opposed the move. Iran officials later said that both Pakistan and India had agreed "in-principle" to the price revision clause "as it was a global practice". Srinivasan today said the transit fee issue with Pakistan was settled when Deora visited Islamabad in April this year. He added there were a few issues with Iran that India wanted to solve at the Tehran meeting. India wants Iran to hand over the gas at the India-Pakistan border rather than the Iran-Pakistan border as has been suggested by Tehran. "We want to ensure security of the gas through Pakistan and by taking delivery of the gas on the Pakistan-India border, we will make Iran and Pakistan responsible for our share of the gas as well," said an official in the petroleum ministry.