IRAN:IRAN PLANS to finalise the long- delayed gas pipeline to India via Pakistan shortly, despite opposition from the US, and to expand vital energy and strategic ties with New Delhi in an increasingly turbulent region.
Announcing this at the end of his five-hour working visit to New Delhi on Tuesday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said discussions on implementing the 2,775km-long Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline would conclude within 45 days.
Calling it a "pipeline of peace", Mr Ahmadinejad said that the $7.5bn project had social, political and economic implications for Iran, Pakistan and India.
Earlier he had visited Pakistan and Sri Lanka on his whirlwind South Asian tour.
The pipeline project, which was mooted in 1994, has been plagued by disputes with Iran over royalties and with Pakistan over transit fees. For over a decade it was hostage to worsening security ties between India and Pakistan who came to the brink of hostilities yet again in 2002.
But bilateral ties between them have improved considerably since 2004 and last week the two countries' petroleum ministers meeting in Islamabad declared that all operational issues regarding the pipeline had been resolved and a formal agreement was imminent.
In his meeting with India's prime minister Manmohan Singh, the Iranian president also sought to resolve differences arising from Delhi - primarily at Washington's prompting - voting against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2006 and 2007 for its alleged nuclear weapons programme.
India has emerged as America's strategic partner since 9/11 and has been under pressure from Washington to avoid any co-operation with Tehran, especially with regard to the IPI as the US believes that revenue from it could fuel Iran's rogue uranium enrichment programme.
But energy-deprived India has dismissed Washington's advocacy, opting instead to resurrect traditional ties with Iran, prompted largely by its hunger for gas and oil to fuel its high growth rate, the world's second highest after China.
Delhi's overtures to Tehran also excited a minor diplomatic row with the US after it rebuffed Washington's call to ask Mr Ahmadinejad to suspend Iran's uranium enrichment programme.
Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee curtly snubbed Washington last week saying it should not take responsibility upon itself to determine whether Iran is making nuclear weapons or not.
A chastened US hastened to defuse India's ire by suggesting that Washington had not indulged in any "finger pointing" when it asked Delhi to use its influence to end Iran's programme.
Delhi is also seeking to accelerate three transport projects linking the Indian subcontinent with the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, central Asia, Russia and Europe.
These include the development of a new port complex at Chah Bahar on the Iranian coast from where a road goes north to Afghanistan. India has also agreed to build a link from Zaranj on the Iran-Afghan border to Delaram connecting all major cities in Afghanistan besides linking up with the central Asian republics, Russia and eventually Europe.
Constructing a rail link between Iran and central Asia is also on the anvil for Indian Railways.