Indo-Iran pipeline fraught with risks: PM
Dated 21/7/2005
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Washington, July 21 (PTI) Observing that the proposed multi-billion dollar Indo-Iran gas pipeline via Pakistan is fraught with risks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said he did not know if any international consortium of bankers would underwrite the project.
"Only preliminary discussions have taken place (on the pipeline). We are terribly short of our energy supply and we desperately need new sources of energy. And that's why with Pakistan we have agreed to explore the possibility of the pipeline," he told 'The Washington Post' yesterday when asked about the discussions on building a gas pipeline with Iran.
"But I am realistic enough to realise that there are many risks because considering all the uncertainities of the situation there in Iran. I don't know if any international consortium of bankers would probably underwrite this. But we are in a spate of preliminary negotiations, and the background of this is we desperately need the supply of gas that Iran has," the Prime Minister said.
Asked whether India can use its new relationship with the US to help the country on relations with Iran, Singh said: "We are entirely one with the rest of the world, that countries which take solemn international obligations, that they must honour those obligations...Our interest would be to work with other like-minded countries that a constructive solution can be found for the problems that Iran is expressing, that the world community is expressing about Iran."
