Pak mulls options for energy needs
US had said that it was opposed to the Indo-Iran pipeline in view of Tehran's reluctance to cooperate on nuke front.
Pakistan has hoped the project will be speeded up after its latest talks with Tehran but maintained that it was weighing the other two options of pipeline from Qatar and Turkmenistan.
"Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project will promote regional cooperation and will open up new avenues of interaction for the mutual advantages," Pakistan's Minister for Petroleum and National Resources Ammanullah Kahn Jadoon said during his talks with Iranian Deputy Petroleum Minister Najeed Hosseinian on Monday.
Welcoming the Iranian delegation, Jadoon said the government "was pursuing the Turkmenistan and Qatar gas pipeline projects and desired to implement one of the most viable projects as quickly as possible to meet the energy supply-demand gap after 2010," an official press release said.
He said that the 5th Joint Working Group meeting of Iran and Pakistan delegations at Islamabad, which met during the past two days, would come out with fruitful discussions to speed up the IPI project.
Jadoon and Hosseinian met on Monday in the backdrop of US Under Secretary Nicholas Burns' comments that US was opposed to the project and India and Pakistan should look for new avenues to meet their energy needs.
Burns, who visited Pakistan few days ago, told Geo TV in an interview that US was opposed to the project in view of Tehran's reluctance to cooperate on the nuclear front.
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