NEW DELHI, Jan 27: Iranian President Mohammed Khatami Monday urged Indian leaders to join hands with Tehran to construct a multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline which would bring fuel to energy-starved India.

Speaking to Indian industrialists, Khatami said the long-delayed pipeline which would cross Pakistan “can be implementable.”

“A relatively long time has passed since its preliminary planning,” Khatami said, but “the project is still in the phase of its feasibility study.”

But once research is complete, “this pipeline project will play a very significant role in providing India with inexpensive and perennial flow of energy,” said Khatami, ending a four-day visit to India.

Discussions on the 3.5 billion-dollar pipeline began in 1994, but a breakthrough has been elusive due to tensions between Pakistan and India and the high cost of the project.

The proposed pipeline would run 1,600 kilometres from Iran to Sindh before travelling another 1,000 kilometres to India.

For Iran, which holds the world’s largest gas reserves after Russia, the Indian market is as important as the European market which it hopes to serve one day through its pipeline across Turkey.

India, meanwhile, imports more than half of its billion-plus population’s energy needs. It is bracing for a jump in oil prices that could be triggered by a US-led attack on Iraq.

“Iran has gas and we want it,” Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said Saturday after talks with Khatami.

Vajpayee said India and Iran agreed that a “mutually acceptable and stable arrangement for the transportation of gas” needed to be found.

“But there are some impediments in the middle which we are trying to remove. We are working towards a mutually satisfactory agreement which will be long lasting,” Vajpayee said.

Indian Oil Minister Ram Naik will visit Iran some time this year to discuss the export of gas, the Press Trust of India (PTI) said Monday.

The report said Iran’s oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, last week sidestepped the Pakistan issue to offer Indian national oil firms equity in Iranian oil and gas fields in exchange for New Delhi buying 2.5 million tons of gas each year.

The report said India favoured an underwater line to avoid any disruption in gas supply in Pakistan, which with India has fought three major wars.

“Iran recognised our concern for safe delivery of gas at our borders,” Naik told PTI. “The feasibility study for an underwater line from Iran to India is going on schedule. No discussions were held on the onshore pipeline passing through Pakistan.”

Khatami on Monday also urged Indian investment in Iran’s gas and oil industries and called for more cooperation in the tourism, information technology and software sectors, saying Iran enjoyed “easy access” to Europe and Central Asia.

To boost tourism, Khatami said plans were underway for direct flights from Tehran to New Delhi and financial hub Mumbai.

A.N.S. Khamoushi, president of the Iranian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, called on the two countries to diversify their commerce.

He said that of two billion dollars in bilateral trade in 2001-2002, 70 per cent amounted to oil imports by India.—AFP