External affairs minister S.M. Krishna is expected to reassure his Iran counterpart, Mr Manouchehr Mottaki, that India remains interested in the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project when they hold bilateral talks in Tehran.
Regional and global issues such as the situation in Afghanistan and the threat of sanctions on Iran also will figure in discussions likely to take place on Sunday.
Mr Krishna is in the Iran capital to participate in the G-15 meeting. Mr Krishna’s four-day visit assumes importance because the India-Iran bilateral relationship nose-dived after September 2005, when India first voted against the Persian Gulf nation in the International Atomic Energy Agency, and it has not picked up since then. An immediate casualty of the worsening ties was the LNG deal. New Delhi did not help matters by dragging its feet on the gas pipeline.
After a long hiatus, New Delhi now has proposed a meeting of the India-Iran Joint Working Group on Oil and Gas here this month, indicating that it would want to resume negotiations with Tehran on the gas pipeline project. India is understood to have suggested dates between May 23 and 28 for the meeting.
The pipeline has been on the drawing board since the mid-1990s, when Iran and India inked preliminary agreements to transport gas through Pakistan. While concerns about the security of the pipeline, coupled with the US attitude towards Iran, kept New Delhi away from the project, Iran and Pakistan have gone ahead and signed an Inter-Governmental Framework Declaration for cooperation on the pipeline project.
In an interview to this newspaper last year, Mr Krishna had said that the pricing formula, transit fee, security and financial guarantees were some of the outstanding issues that needed further discussion in the joint working group. The Indian engagement of Iran will come at a time when the US and its allies seek to ramp up negotiations at the UN for what they call “smart and strong” sanctions against the Persian Gulf country. New Delhi has indicated that it is opposed to sanctions that would hurt the common people of Iran.
Iran has assumed a significance of its own in India’s strategic calculus, particularly in the context of the situation in Afghanistan. As neighbours of Afghanistan, Iran and India share responsibility for stability and development in that country. They share concerns about the resurgence of the Taliban or its accommodation in governance structures in Afghanistan.