Indo-Pak creates history with pipeline project

Overcoming mutual suspicion made possible by the current thaw in relations, India and Pakistan created history this week with their agreement to build a common pipeline for sourcing oil from Iran to bridge their huge energy deficits.

Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar's first visit to Pakistan as a minister saw Islamabad agreeing to jointly lay a $4.16-billion Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, which is billed as a vehicle guaranteeing energy security for the two nations.

The project's importance and success could be gauged from the fact that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf himself "blessed" the project and, according to Aiyar, got personally involved in removing roadblocks.

"It is indeed history being rewritten. From being suspicious of each other, we have now developed enough confidence of jointly working together. The event is more historic as for the first time trade and economics has overtaken political considerations," said a top official accompanying the Indian delegation.

"This is the first time India and Pakistan discussed the Iran to India gas pipeline as a trilateral issue. We had not talked to Pakistan at all on this issue. All this time we kept saying that the pipeline was a bilateral issue but at the end of the day we cannot deny that it is a triangular relationship," he said.

Three separate bilateral dialogues "between India and Pakistan, between India and Iran and between Pakistan and Iran" would decide on project technicalities, commercial issues, legal framework, financial structuring and related issues over the next six months.