On Aiyar’s table for Aziz: give us our MFN, then Iran gas pipeline can run through Pak

It has said that the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline cannot be a stand-alone project and the two nations should provide India transit rights to Central Asia.

Last month, India’s National Security Advisor J N Dixit upped the ante by telling Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi that transit facility through Iran to Central Asia was an important consideration in India’s approach to the pipeline project.

This position was reconfirmed when Iranian Ambassador S Z Yaghoubi sought a clarification this month.

Specific conditions for implementing the proposed pipeline first came up during Dixit’s meeting with Kharazzi and Iran’s National Security Advisor Hassan Rouhani in Tehran on October 19.

India’s position is that if the pipeline project is to be discussed and processed for implementation, it should be accompanied by parallel measures of reciprocity by Pakistan to create a positive economic package. To that end, New Delhi wants Pakistan to open trade with India and give ‘reverse transit facilities’ through Pakistan to Iran and Afghanistan. These facilities are ‘‘a very important condition for meaningful discussions on the pipeline project,’’ Dixit informed Kharazzi.

India’s stand would be reiterated during talks with Shaukat Aziz, said sources. The flurry of activity follows a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Musharraf on September 24 in New York where the two agreed to look at the possibility of a gas pipeline via Pakistan in the larger context of expanding trade relations between the two rivals.

With recent gas discoveries on the east and west coast, India’s need for the pipeline is not as paramount as that of Pakistan and Iran.

While Iran needs to diversify into gas export and not depend solely on crude oil for its foreign exchange, Pakistan’s lure is the annual $600-800 million of transit fees, royalty and cheap gas that would accrue from the onland pipeline apart from massive investment that would help revive its economy.

At a meeting with External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh in Qingdao in China last June, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Kurshid Mehmood Kasuri had suggested delinking the progress and discussion on the pipeline from talks on MFN status and business relations.

But South Block mandarins insist that any headway in the pipeline talks would be contingent on ‘‘complementary progress’’ on reciprocal transit facilities from India to Afghanistan and beyond, and prior grant of MFN status and normal trade and economic relations by Pakistan.