Pakistan to go ahead with the Pak-Iran Gas Pipeline Project – Zardari

Pakistan to go ahead with the Pak-Iran Gas Pipeline Project – Zardari

President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari has made it clear to the international players that Pakistan is going to go ahead with the Pak-Iran gas pipeline project and feels that the venture is extremely important for the prosperity and future of the Pakistani
nation.

Pakistan is currently facing a massive energy crisis as there is shortage of electricity and gas in the country. The South Asian country is not able to search for more gas because of the on-going war on terror, which is quite unfortunate because the experts
feel that the northern areas of the country and Baluchistan are rich in natural resources.

Iran has been offering assistance in the energy sector for a long time now and the present government has given a green signal to the project.

However, the international powers, especially the US have been pressurizing Pakistan not to have any economic relations with Iran. The western powers have been promoting TAPI gas project (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India) but that is going to
be much more expensive for Pakistan.   

There have been accusations on Iran that it is trying to go nuclear for aggressive purposes and a number of economic sanctions have been applied on Iran.

However, the President of Pakistan is not bothered about the sanctions on Iran and wants to have strong trading relations with the neighbouring country.  

Zardari said, “The recent agreement between the two countries to work towards expanding the Pakistan-Iran Preferential Trade Agreement to include additional items form both sides and making it an agenda item for the next meeting of the trade committee was
a welcome move to enhance trade links between the two countries.”

The President added that both countries can do wonders for their people if they work together in different fields of life.

“Our resource constraints can be overcome by joining hands and enhancing cooperation in all the areas particularly trade, energy, horticulture, livestock, communication, infrastructure development and engineering sector,” he added.

On the other side of the coin, Iran’s President, Mahmud Ahmadinejad is also very optimistic about the future relations with Pakistan.

The Iranian President expressed, “The project will bring prosperity in the region and would further strengthen Iran-Pakistan ties.”

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=12040

Posted by Yasir Hashmi on Feb 8 2012. Filed under Pakistan, South Asia, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry