NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR, 25 November 2004 — India remained noncommittal yesterday about joining a proposed gas pipeline through Pakistan to link India with Iran’s gas fields.
India’s Oil Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer told visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz that talks on the proposed pipeline should go ahead as part of a push for more regional trade.
Aziz revived the 8-year-old proposal yesterday at a meeting with Aiyer, who insisted that the plan had to be linked to overall progress in trade and economic ties between the nations including most favored nation (MFN) status for India. Aiyer said, “The MFN status is very much part of the economic and trade issues”.
“The economic relations between India and Pakistan must not be limited to just one area,” Aiyer said. “We want to move forward in every sector of economic cooperation.”
“We did repeat what we have said earlier about using Pakistan as transit corridor (for sourcing gas from Iran),” Aiyar said.
“Notes were exchanged on the gas pipeline issue and the energy security situation in our respective countries.”
He said the meeting focused on the energy situation in the two countries and Pakistan’s efforts to bring gas from Iran.
Although Pakistan could independently build a pipeline from Iran, it would be financially more viable if the venture was expanded with the participation of Indian companies, Aiyer quoted Aziz as saying. India would also benefit because the pipeline would help bridge its widening energy gap, with demand increasingly outpacing supply.
The pipeline discussions come amid often-stumbling peace talks between the two rivals. While those talks have hit snags in recent weeks, with tough talk recently on the disputed territory of Kashmir, their ties have improved dramatically since 2002, when they nearly went to war.
Iran has been pursuing the idea of the $3 billion pipeline with India and Pakistan since 1996, but tensions between the two nations over Kashmir have blocked progress. The previous Indian government even considered laying the pipeline under the sea to avoid going through Pakistani territory — a plan that would have tripled the cost.
In the past, India also linked its participation in the pipeline to Pakistan’s willingness to provide a transit route for trade between India and Central Asia. Currently, Indian exporters move their goods to Afghanistan and Central Asia through Iran, incurring higher transportation costs because of the longer route.
“There must be a wider perspective on all issues of economic and trade cooperation,” Aiyer told reporters. The pipeline “is only one of those issues.”
In another development, a top Kashmiri separatist said yesterday Aziz failed to unite Kashmiri separatists after meetings with the groups opposed to Indian rule.
Aziz met hard-line and moderate groups from the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference beyond midnight Tuesday to try to persuade them to be united on a resolution of the Kashmir dispute. The separatists want independence for Kashmir or for the region to be incorporated into Pakistan.
“The prime minister tried his best to unite the two factions but there was no progress,” the separatist leader said on condition of anonymity. He blamed hard-liners for not being “flexible.”
The Hurriyat split between moderates and hard-liners last year after hard-liners expressed no confidence in the moderate head of the alliance, Maulana Abbas Ansari.
Ansari relinquished his post in June this year and since then Hurriyat founder Mirwaiz Umar Farooq is heading the moderate faction.
Hard-liners, led by pro-Pakistan Syed Ali Geelani claim to be the real Hurriyat.
Geelani’s faction demands the holding of a plebiscite while Mirwaiz’s moderates say they are willing to discuss various “road maps” with India and Pakistan.
“Geelani says he is ready for unity minus Ansari and two other separatists Abdul Gani Bhat and Bilal Lone,” a separatist source said.
Bhat has also headed Hurriyat, while Lone is the chief of a splinter faction, the separatist Peoples Conference. Geelani’s faction has the backing of militants who have been fighting Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region for 15 years.
Prominent separatist Shabir Shah said that unity among the separatists figured prominently in their talks with Aziz but declined to give details. “Pakistan is very much interested in seeing us (separatists) united. We assured the prime minister that our efforts for reunification would continue,” said Shah, who had a separate meeting with Aziz. “I told him (Aziz) that division among the separatists was our internal matter which we would sort out in Srinagar.” India and Pakistan each hold part of Kashmir but claim it in its entirety.
“We have urged Aziz to impress upon India that we be allowed to visit Pakistan for a dialogue with the people in its part of Kashmir,” said Shah. (Additional input from AP)
