90 per cent work on IPI pipeline complete within Iran: Envoy
Iran today said 90 per cent work on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline was complete within its territory and it was open for having trade arrangements with any country in the energy sector.
Addressing a press conference here, Iran's Ambassador to India Seyed Mahdi Nabizadeh said work was also in progress on the Pakistani side and it was ready to start 50 per cent of the total 60 mcm capacity once the pipeline was in place.
"We have allocated 50 per cent capacity to Pakistan and any other country, including India, can join and get the balance 50 per cent of the gas," he said speaking through an interperter.
Nabizadeh maintained that the project should not be looked at purely from the economic perspective but as an initiative that would strengthen cultural ties in the region and have a positive impact for the three countries.
On the issue of Euro payments for crude purchases, he said Iran was open to have bilateral mechanism like it has with South Korea and China if the current arrangement routed through a German bank was not successful.
Nabizadeh said Iran and India could cooperate to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan.
He stressed on regional countries taking lead in normalising situation in Afghanistan contending that "other outside countries" will de-stabilise the region.
He said India and Iran were also discussing taking up joint development projects in Afghanistan and cited cooperation in building the Zaranj-Delaram highway as a case in the point.
Nabizadeh also extended support to the protesters demanding the removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak saying that the people will object to any government that doest not respect their aspirations.
"If any government does not respect the aspirations of its people, it will face opposition," he said.
"Some believe that the uprising in Egypt is because of economic reasons but we feel that it has to do with the values of the people which the Egyptian government has been ignoring," he said.
On the Muslim Brotherhood, he said it was one of the oldest Islamic organisations in Egypt which had opposed the government in Cairo for its relationship with Israel.
On nuclear energy, Nabizadeh said Iran had the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy and its atomic programme was being carried out under the watchful eyes of the global atomic watchdog IAEA.
He also said Iran was making rapid strides in the field of space sciences and hoped to send a man in space in the next ten years.
