ISLAMABAD, April 25: Iran is sending a team of experts to hold talks with Pakistani officials on technical issues and gas pricing of $7.4 billion Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.

The delegation, led by Deputy Petroleum Minister Nejad Hosseinian, would arrive here on April 28. Pakistan’s Secretary Petroleum Ahmad Waqar will lead the Pakistani side.

The meeting of the Pakistan- Iran joint working group on gas pipeline will be held in the light of last week’s telephonic discussion between President Pervez Musharraf and his Iranian counterpart, in which both sides had agreed to accelerate the technical talks to get the project under way as soon as possible.

Oil ministers of India, Iran and Pakistan had agreed during a meeting in Doha last week to materialise the project despite the US opposition on the back of Iran’s nuclear programme. Iran, Pakistan and India had earlier held talks at the tripartite joint working group meeting on the project in Tehran on March 13-15.

The sources said that during the Tehran meeting, Iran had offered $6 per MMBTU sale price for its gas, adding that Pakistan would now negotiate on the Iranian offer.

Pakistan is currently following a two-track policy on the project i.e. on bilateral level if India stayed away and trilateral level if India joined the project. A final decision by three countries is required to finish paperwork in either case so that project implementation phase could begin by July 2007.

The parties to the project are yet to decided whether to adopt a segmented or an integrated approach. The issue would be finalised in Tehran next month. Under the integrated approach, the project has to be offered for construction and financing as a single entity while segmented approach means the pipeline would be constructed separately by the three countries to avoid possible UN and US sanctions.