Ahmadinejad: Iran, India, and Pakistan To Discuss Gas Pipeline Agreement

BANGALORE, India — President Ahmadinejad of Iran said ministers from his country, India, and Pakistan will discuss an agreement on a gas pipeline within 45 days and present it to the leaders of the three nations, brushing aside American concerns about the project.

"They just finalize the case and give their conclusions to the leaders," Mr. Ahmadinejad told reporters at a news conference in New Delhi late Monday after meeting Prime Minister Singh of India. "After that, we will decide on the final decision."

India and Pakistan last week resumed talks on the pipeline that will carry natural gas from Iran, holder of the world's second-largest reserves of the fuel, to meet their energy needs. The two countries are resisting American pressure to end talks on the pipeline, which they want to complete by December 2012, after a decade of delays.

Messrs. Singh and Ahmadinejad discussed the commercial viability of the project and the assured supply of the fuel, India's foreign secretary, Shivshankar Menon, said. Officials of the three countries will meet soon to continue discussions.

"The success of the pipeline will depend on what cost the gas is made available at to the customers," the head of the industry division at the New Delhi-based National Council for Applied Economic Research, R. Venkatesan, said. "If you take political considerations, it is not worth it."

India last week rebuffed American calls to push Mr. Ahmadinejad to end Iran's nuclear program. The Bush administration says Iran's nuclear program may be a cover for building weapons, a charge which the Islamic republic denies.

America would "counsel against" the pipeline plan, a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said at a briefing in Washington on April 28.

"Given where Iran is in the international system, being under sanctions, and given its actions within the international system, is now really the time to conclude a pipeline deal with the Iranian government?" he said.

America raises issues of international concern over Iran's behavior in areas including "terrorism and their destabilizing actions in the Middle East," Mr. McCormack said.

"India is a market short of gas. The key question is how much gas at what price," the head of research at Crisil Ltd., the Indian unit of Standard & Poor's, Nagarajan Narasimhan, said. The Indian government may also seek assurances about the pipeline's safety across international borders, he said in a telephone interview from Mumbai.

Oil ministers from India and Pakistan agreed on the principles of the project, they said on April 25. The South Asian neighbors resumed talks on the 1,300-mile pipeline a month after a newly elected government led by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani took office in Pakistan.

The ministers discussed transit fees, transportation costs, and the project structure, the director at the Ministry of Petroleum, Manu Srivastava, said April 28. "There is a greater agreement on that," he said. "We will be proceeding."

The pipeline will transport 30 million cubic meters of gas each to Pakistan and India in the first phase and 45 million cubic meters each in the second stage.

India's current gas supplies of 85 million cubic meters a day, including imported liquefied natural gas, fall short of the potential demand of 170 million cubic meters, according to government estimates. Demand may quadruple to 400 million cubic meters a day by 2025 if the economy grows at the projected rate of 7% to 8% a year, the government says.

Mr. Ahmadinejad arrived in New Delhi from Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo.

Mr. Ahmadinejad and President Musharraf of Pakistan "resolved all issues" related to the pipeline project when they met in Islamabad on April 28, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported.