Reports of last Friday's meeting in Washington between Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri and the US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, reveal that the US has not abandoned its efforts to stop the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. Rice, who first publicly opposed the project during a press conference in Delhi last March, is said to have told Kasuri that even if the administration dropped its objections, powerful groups in Congress, the media and academia would continue to oppose it, adversely affecting Washington's relations with Pakistan.
It is a matter of record, however, that when the administration feels strongly enough about continuing support for an ally, despite its transgression of a sanctions law, it can do so. In any case, it is unfair, both on technical and political grounds, for Washington to pressure Pakistan on the issue. As it is, the US rests its objections on a domestic law, Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, which forbids not only American companies to do business with Iran but also third country violators, who may face a cut-off in economic assistance, and even sanctions.
As Pakistan has been rightly arguing, the gas pipeline project is not in breach of that law, since it seeks to deter companies and countries from investing in any Iranian infrastructure project having a value of more than dollar 20 million. As per the proposal under trilateral discussion, Iran itself would be responsible for laying the pipeline upto the Pak-Iran border.
Pakistan would invite multinational companies to invest in the pipeline construction only on its own territory. Technically, therefore, it would not be violating the Iran and Libya sanctions law. Those interested in suffocating Iran economically may yet maintain that the pipeline would still be transporting Iranian oil for sale in Pakistan and India, making the Tehran regime a major economic beneficiary of the project. But then it should be useful to recall a relevant example from the past when the US had ignored violations of stringent UN sanctions to help its allies.
It is now well known that mindful of the pressing energy needs of its two allies, Jordan and Egypt, Washington had looked the other way as these countries continually defied the UN oil embargo to buy smuggled Iraqi oil. There are at least three good reasons why it should adopt the same policy in the present case to help its 'major non-Nato ally' even if it contravenes US domestic law.
The first reason, of course, is that Pakistan needs the project badly because it is to bring it rich dividends in the form of transit fee worth nearly dollar 600 million annually, only dollar 100 million less than the American economic assistance.
Secondly, Pakistan's own energy requirements are increasing fast, and the other projects under consideration, the Qatari and Turkmen gas pipelines, remain a distant possibility. Considering that Afghanistan is still far from stable, the pipeline from Turkmenistan as well as additional ones from some other Central Asian countries will take quite a while to move from the planning to the practical stage.
The third, and the most compelling, reason is that the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline has already created a strong peace constituency in India. Delhi's main incentive in seeking resolution of all outstanding issues with Pakistan, including the Kashmir question, is to have assured uninterrupted access to the Iranian gas and all other energy sources that may become available in the region in due course. The US must not act as a spoiler of this atmosphere of co-operation and peace in South Asia.
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