By IANS,
New Delhi : Iran will consider a bilateral agreement with India for payment of oil supplies, if the current arrangement of routing transactions through a Germany-based bank does not fall through, Iranian ambassador to India Seyed Mahdi Nabizadeh said here Tuesday.
In December 2010, Reserve Bank of India had banned Indian firms from using the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) to pay for oil imports from Iran. After negotiations, both countries agreed that India could pay for Iranian crude through European-Iranian Trade Bank AG.
But, with the bank also under US sanctions, the Iranian envoy suggested that his country was ready to have a bilateral agreement for payments, just as it had with other nations like South Korea and China.
“It is a technical mechanism that they (India and Iran) have to discuss,” said Nabizadeh told reporters here. He added that he was satisfied with the current solution of payments.
On the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, he said that India can still join and get half of the gas supplied through the proposed 60 mcm capacity pipeline.
He said that the project should not be just looked at purely from economic perspective, but as one which will have a positive impact in the region.