By IANS
New Delhi : If all goes well, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could join Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf for a historic tripartite event in Tehran later this year with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to seal an ambitious deal to carry natural gas to their countries through a 2,300-km pipeline that the US is opposed to.
"I am very glad we have reached, to a great extent, an agreement on all issues," India's Petroleum Minister Murli Deora said, referring to a meeting over three days in the Indian capital among officials of the three countries who have been working on this ambitious $7.4 billion project for the last several years.
Iran's special envoy Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, who attended the talks, said Manmohan Singh and Pervez Musharraf will be invited to Tehran to ink the deal with the Iranian leader as he hoped to resolve pending issues by July.
Officials of the three countries met here for the two-day talks on the pipeline and held extensive discussions to resolve all differences that have prevented the project, first proposed way back in 1990, from becoming a reality.
"All major elements have been thrashed out," India's Petroleum Secretary M.S. Srinivasan told reporters here as he emerged from the talks with his Pakistan counterpart Ahmad Waqar and Ghanimifard.
"We are very close to resolving the entire thing. Next month, the ministers should be able to meet in Islamabad and then in Iran." Deora is expected to visit Islamabad to give a political push to the talks.
The project, also called the 'peace pipeline,' will supply 30 million cubic meters of gas each daily to India and Pakistan. The gas will be delivered at a chosen point on the India-Pakistan border.
Global consultants Ernst and Young and Britain's ILF, who were appointed by the Indian government, have already found the project to be feasible. Iran has the second-biggest natural gas reserves in the world after Russia.
"We are assuring that 30 million cubic metres per day of gas will be provided to both India and Pakistan each, and will start off by 2011," Ghanimifard said and indicated that they had set an informal deadline of end-July to clinch a deal.
"We expect the transportation tariff at around $0.6 to $0.7 per million British thermal unit," Srinivasan said.
India and Pakistan had reached a broad agreement on the transportation fee that is payable to Islamabad for bringing the gas from Iran and supplying it to India even as Tehran asked for a re-look on the price of gas.
"We have agreed on the principles of the formulae under which the transportation fee will be computed," a senior official from Pakistan had said Thursday. "The fee will depend on the cost of transportation infrastructure."
But the two countries could not reach an agreement on the transit fee.
Pakistan has been demanding a transit fee for the whole stretch of the pipeline from Iran to the Indian border. But India wants to pay only for the extension of the project to its border since Pakistan will also use the pipeline.
The two sides felt this matter could be left to their political leadership to decide.