ISLAMABAD, Aug 22: Pakistan said on Monday it expected work on the $7.2 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline to start early next year while it was also pursuing plans for similar pipelines from Turkmenistan and Qatar.

Pakistan foreign ministry spokesman said he thought the discussion about the project was “on track” as he referred to various recent ministerial and other contacts among the three countries.

“In our view a project structure should be in position by the end of November, should pave the way for a bilateral framework agreement by the end of December, and the construction of the pipeline should commence in early 2006,” spokesman Mohammad Naeem Khan told journalists in his briefing.

He said Islamabad believed the project envisaging a 2,670-km pipeline would be an “important economic CBM” (confidence- building measure) between Pakistan and India. “And, therefore, this is an important development and it will also meet the energy requirements of the two sides,” he added.

He told a questioner that Pakistan would go ahead with the project in any case “because we need this energy for our own requirements” to sustain a high level of economic growth achieved over the last few years.

“We are also exploring the possibility of TAP — Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan — gas pipeline,” he said about the project that had previously been conceived in the 1990s but abandoned because of the civil war in Afghanistan. “Actually the negotiations are taking place on that,” the spokesman said about TAP pipeline and added: “We will also be looking at the possibility of having a gas pipeline from Qatar.”