By: Inayatullah | March 09, 2013


Pakistan’s decision to go ahead with the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline may well prove to be a test case in the presently fluctuating relations between USA and Pakistan.

President Asif Zardari’s visit to Iran after the PPP-led government sat over the proposed project for more than four years may well have been motivated by the urge to bolster the party’s prospects in the coming elections. The fact that Pakistan has taken a firm stand, however, is a significant step to further the county’s national interests.

As expected, the Obama administration has been alerting Pakistan to the probability of clamping sanctions under the US Sanctions Act. The State Department spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, told reporters in Washington last Sunday that the finalisation of the Iran-Pakistan pipeline project was bound to raise “serious concerns” in USA. This, he said, had been made “absolutely clear” to Islamabad. Ventrell added: “As a member of the international community, a current member of the IAEA board of governors and the UN Security Council, Pakistan has an obligation to join multilateral efforts to convince Iran to adhere to international nuclear obligations.” He also referred to US contribution towards Pakistan with a view to alleviating the energy crisis.

On March 7, another US Department’s spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, spoke on the subject and said: “The proposed deal will violate UN sanctions laws.” She acknowledged that Pakistan has a lot of unmet energy requirements. The US, she added, was aware of these requirements and has been “working in close partnership to find better ways” to meet these needs.

While the US threat has to be addressed carefully, according to the expert opinion in Pakistan, apprehensions about sanctions are not justified considering that the purchase of gas from Iran will not attract them in view of the nature of the deal. There will be no Pakistani investment in Iran’s energy sector, as the payment for gas supplies is to be made through the export of foodstuffs and other commodities. These commodities do not come into the category of sanctionable items. Also, no sanctions have been imposed on Turkey and Turkmenistan because of the Iranian pipelines laid there. India, too, has been importing oil from Iran without any fear of sanctions.

Another good reason for the US to avoid imposing sanctions on Pakistan is the Afghanistan endgame compulsions. These will include smooth and economical transportation of goods and military personnel from Afghanistan.

For this, the US will need Pakistan’s approval for the use of its territory. Washington knows too well how it had to face logistical and financial difficulties for months when after the Salala killings the route through Pakistan remained out of bounds for the Nato containers. The available alternative routes are cumbersome and much more expensive.

It is now well understood that USA very much requires Pakistan’s close cooperation in holding talks with various elements of Afghan resistance for a face-saving exit from Afghanistan and ensuring some sort of stability in the country. One may also keep in view the ongoing dialogue between Iran and the P-5 countries. As the talks proceed, there is every possibility that some of the sanctions imposed on Iran maybe relaxed on Tehran agreeing to observe certain conditions demanded by IAEA and some of the influential members of the international community.

Pakistan most urgently needs gas to increase its energy supply. Because of the myopic polices of the Masharraf regime and a wilful neglect to add capacity as well as defaulting on fully utilising the existing capacity, the country has suffered enormously. The resort to, more or less, inefficient and expensive rental plants has taken a heavy toll of our scarce funds and spawned large-scale corruption and further with unending outages, severely damaging industrial production and making the people’s lives extremely miserable.

The American aid for energy that, too, has taken time to materialise will - the whole of it - help provide only a small part of the overall requirements.

It is imperative that the concerned authorities in Pakistan not only stick to the deal with Iran, but also ensure that all possible hurdles are overcome speedily and every possible assistance is provided to complete the task of laying down the pipeline in a record time. Some of the works undertaken and urgently completed, recently, by the Punjab government provide a good example to follow.

It is a matter of deep regret that the federal government wasted so many years to strike the deal for the gas to flow from Iran to Pakistan. The negligent administration possibly would be paying a price for this unpardonable conduct in this respect at the polls due to be held after the next few weeks.

Hopefully, the interim government and the elected rulers later would not let the grass grow under their feet and will accord the highest priority to this project. They are also expected to take up a number of large and small hydel projects both for generating power and storage of water for irrigation.

The pipeline project with Iran will open up avenues of extensive relations with one of our close neighbours. Besides boosting economic ties, we need to enhance our cultural relations with a country that has contributed so much, overtime, to our history, languages, literature, art and architecture. With time, tourism will also grow bringing the people close to each other.

It does one’s heart good to see the government entrusting the management of Gwadar seaport to the Chinese. How short-sighted of the concerned authorities that it had let things drift and allow a crucial project, pregnant with immense possibilities of benefit to Pakistan and with enormous positive international implications, to remain undeveloped for years.

It is further important that we take serious steps to promote people-to-people contacts with China. There is also need for doubling and, in fact, tripling the volume of our trade with the fastest growing and the second largest economy of the world located so closed to our borders. In most of our leading universities, arrangements should be made to teach Chinese. More of Chinese and Pakistani students should study in each others’ universities and a sizeable programme of exchange of groups of young men and women chalked out.

Let us hope the next elected national government would have men and women endowed with vision, will and competence to make up for the last decades and move fast to lift the society and the state to higher levels and scrupulously work for the development of the country and welfare of the people.

The writer is an ex-federal secretary and ambassador, and a freelance political

and international relations analyst.

Email: pacade@brain.net.pk

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