July 20, 2002	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 9, 1423

ASHKHABAD, July 19: Japan could invest in a project to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

Japan is “ready to consider possible forms of participation and cooperation in the project, as soon as a detailed feasibility study is ready,” the ministry quoted Japan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saiken Sugeura as saying.

The project to build a 1,500-kilometre pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan was suspended in 1998 due to the Afghan civil war.

The idea has been revived since the fall of the Taliban regime in Kabul, but is still in the planning stages.

Turkmenistan, which has immense gas reserves but lacks export outlets to transport its riches to world markets, is lobbying hard for a revival of the plan.

Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov and counterparts from Afghanistan and Pakistan signed a memorandum of understanding to pursue the project in May.

Japan will send a delegation to Turkmenistan by the end of March next year to discuss “concrete ways of cooperating on this issue,” Sugeura was quoted as saying after talks in Ashkhabad. —AFP