US pushes for TAP gas line

Washington is pushing for a new gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and "strongly opposes" a rival pipeline from Iran, US diplomat Steven Mann said on Tuesday after meeting with Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov.
Niyazov and Mann met for two hours on Monday to discuss a variety of possible gas pipeline projects from the gas-rich Central Asian state, including pipelines to China and across the Caspian Sea as well as through Afghanistan to energy-hungry Pakistan and India, Mann said.
"The demand is there, but the next step is to look for private-sector partners to develop this line", said Mann, who is the US State Department's principal deputy assistant secretary for South and Central Asian affairs.
Niyazov, a mercurial politician who has been president since Turkmenistan's independence in 1991, said after his meeting with Mann that the country supported "the policy of creating a diverse pipeline system," the Turkmen government news agency reported on Monday.
During the mid-1990s, the United States pushed for a gas pipeline to be built across the Caspian Sea from Turkmenistan to Western markets, but Niyazov eventually backed out of the project, which was opposed by Moscow.
The project to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan came a step closer to realisation recently with completion of a feasibility study sponsored by the Asian Development Bank, but remains in doubt due to ongoing instability along its route, particularly in Afghanistan.
Aside from security issues, building a pipeline through Afghanistan's mountains would be hugely expensive and technically difficult, probably requiring government subsidies, said Chris Weafer, an analyst at Russia's Alfa Bank.
Mann acknowledged that the route posed commercial difficulties, but insisted that "governments do not build successful pipelines ... These pipelines must be attractive to the private sector."
The US also has strategic interests in such a pipeline, Weafer said, including undermining the potential profitability of a pipeline Russian state monopoly Gazprom plans to build from Iran to Pakistan.
Mann on Tuesday said Washington opposed a pipeline from Iran, which it considers a state-sponsored terrorism, as "a matter both of US law and US policy."