ISLAMABAD: Iran and Pakistan on Sunday vowed to work on a bilateral gas pipeline project if India fails to join them.
The original plan called for a $7 billion pipeline to pump Iranian gas to India through Pakistani territory, and officials had said they aimed to sign a deal in June.
The cost and timing of a bilateral deal for a shorter pipeline has yet to determined. Ahmed Waqar, permanent secretary at Pakistan's Petroleum Ministry, said Pakistan and Iran had agreed to go ahead with the bilateral pipeline regardless of the outcome of the trilateral project.
“Both sides agreed to make immediate efforts for concluding the bilateral arrangements,” said a statement issued after three days of talks between senior petroleum officials of the two countries.
Iran's deputy oil minister, Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, on Friday urged Pakistan and India to press ahead with the project or face the prospect of buying 1 million barrels a day of imported oil.
The United States, which suspects Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, has been urging Pakistan and India not to do business with Tehran.
Instead Washington wants them to focus their efforts on another gas pipeline project that is planned to run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan.
The US has offered to provide technical know-how for India's civil nuclear programme as part of a strategy to forge strong links with the fast-rising Indian economy.
But it has refused to make the same offer to Pakistan because of the role played by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb, in selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Officials of Pakistan, Iran and India next plan to meet in late May to discuss the project.
