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Tripartite Talks on Iran-India Gas Pipeline to Begin 14 March

Posted on: Wednesday, 8 March 2006, 06:00 CST

Text of report in English by Iranian news agency IRNA website

Tehran, 8 March: Iran, Pakistan and India are to hold talks at the working group level on the proposed gas pipeline here on 14-15 March, it was announced Wednesday [8 March].

Petro-energy Information Network (PIN) quoted Deputy Oil Minister for International Affairs Hadi Nezhad-Hoseynian as saying the meeting will be the first joint session between the three countries.

The first session of the joint working group between Iran and Pakistan will also be held next Sunday in Tehran, he added.

The draft agreement on trilateral cooperation, the plan for carrying out the project, pricing mechanism, points where gas is to be delivered and the agenda of the trilateral meeting will be discussed during Iran-Pakistan joint working group meeting, Nezhad- Hoseynian announced.

Meanwhile, a Pakistani daily, The News, wrote on Monday that the proposal to lay a trans-regional pipeline came up in the mid-90s, but no tangible progress could be made towards its implementation mainly because of Pak-India tensions.

However, after the start of the peace process between the two countries in February 2004 there has been significant progress on the proposal.

Experts in Pakistan and India have described the proposed pipeline as a "pipeline of peace".

Work on the proposed 2,700-kilometre pipeline is expected to start next year and be completed in early 2010.

Gas supplies to certain areas of Pakistan and the northern parts of India would start from the gas pipeline by then.

The daily pointed out that Pakistan would receive a maximum of 2.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day while India would receive 3.1 billion cubic feet, the figures indicating that about 5.6 billion cubic feet would be transported to Pakistan and India via the gas pipeline.

Source: BBC Monitoring Middle East

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