NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD, 17 March 2005 — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s bid to promote closer ties with India hit potentially serious snags yesterday over a pipeline from Iran and the possible sale of F-16s to Pakistan.
Tehran, Islamabad and New Delhi are negotiating to build a pipeline to carry gas from Iran through Pakistan to India. Washington opposes other nations doing business with Iran as it struggles to get it to dismantle its nuclear program.
Rice told her hosts that Washington — seeking to apply pressure on Iran over what it says is a secret nuclear weapons program — was concerned over plans for a $4 billion gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan to energy-hungry India. “We have communicated to the Indian government our concerns about the gas pipeline cooperation between Iran and India,” she told reporters after meeting External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh.
Last month, India decided to go ahead with its participation in the 2,775-km pipeline project. Yesterday, Natwar reiterated New Delhi’s support for the project and said India expects “Iran to fulfill all its obligations with regard to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.”
US President George W. Bush accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, bracketing it with North Korea and prewar Iraq in a so-called axis of evil. Tehran says its nuclear program is intended to generate electricity.
Rice later met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Rice said US relations with both India and Pakistan had never been better and this had helped the neighbors in their year-old peace process.
Rice later flew to the Pakistani capital Islamabad from Delhi where she held separate meetings with President Pevez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz
Musharraf urged Washington to lend its support to the efforts aimed at resolving the longstanding dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.
“The normalization in the region will not be possible without a settlement of the core dispute between Pakistan and India. The confidence building measures should be matched by tangible progress in the dialogue process,” Musharraf told Rice.
However, she was upbeat about the peace process between India and Pakistan after talks with Natwar. “We very much admire what the (Indian) prime minister and (Pakistani) president have been able to continue, given the change in government here in India,” Rice told a joint press conference with Natwar.
“It is heartening that dialogue has continued and indeed accelerated and we want to be supportive in any way that we can.”
Rice had indicated while en route to India that she would call on Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, to “be committed to a democratic path for Pakistan”.
Rice will fly to the Afghan capital Kabul early today and then return to Islamabad later the same day for talks with other senior Pakistani figures including her counterpart Khurshid Mehmoud Kasuri.
Indo-Pakistani tensions have eased since the two sides began talks last year aimed at ending half a century of enmity. But New Delhi has opposed US arms sales to Pakistan including F-16 fighters, saying these were aimed against India, while Pakistan has expressed concern about any move by Washington to sell Patriot anti-missile systems to India.
“We did express our concern on certain matters on the defense issue as to how it might create some complications,” Natwar told a joint news conference with Rice. “Our views on F-16s are well known.”
“Our defense cooperation is strong with military-to-military contacts and joint exercises and the United States looks forward to enhancing that defense cooperation over the next several years,” Rice said.
US is considering selling F-16s to India as well. Rice said the question of arms sales, including F-16s, had come up, but she did not expect any announcement on the subject.
A Pakistani official said yesterday that Pakistan was likely to raise with Rice its wish to join an international group fighting the spread of nuclear weapons.
Pakistan’s bid to join the 44-member Nuclear Suppliers Group comes despite growing international concern over a black market run by the disgraced father of Pakistan’s own atomic program. Pakistan yesterday rejected charges that it had developed new illicit channels to upgrade its nuclear weapons program.
Diplomats and nuclear experts said in Vienna this week that Pakistan was using illicit channels to upgrade its nuclear weapons capability. “This story is inaccurate and baseless,” said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani.
