WASHINGTON, June 24: Pakistan is in active talks with Turkmenistan to build a pipeline that will bring natural gas from the Central Asian republic to energy-starved South Asia, says Mukhtar Ahmed, energy adviser to the prime minister.

His statement, given at a seminar in Washington, comes amid renewed doubts about the plausibility of another proposed pipeline for bringing natural gas from Iran.

On Friday President Musharraf told a private television channel in Pakistan that the Iran pipeline project had been held up due to disagreements over the pricing formula.

Gen Musharraf said Pakistan recognised that Iran should make a profit, but the price of piped gas should be less than that of importing liquefied natural gas. "We certainly are not asking for any subsidy, but at the same time we are not going to allow them to fleece us."

The United States has discouraged both India and Pakistan from entering into any

deal with Iran, because of concerns that Tehran intends to develop nuclear weapons. There is also a US law that forbids any major investment in Iran’s oil and gas sector and requires mandatory sanctions against those violating the ban.

Hours after President Musharraf complained that Iran was asking too steep a price for its gas, Mr Ahmed told a conference in Washington that Pakistan was in active talks with Turkmenistan to build a pipeline that would run through war-torn Afghanistan.

“We have been assured in writing by the Turkmen government that the required amount of gas will be made available notwithstanding (their) other commitments,” Mr Ahmed said. Turkmenistan, he said, had enough gas reserves to support a 30-year project for Pakistan and India.

Turkmenistan is also pursuing export deals with Russia, Ukraine and China, raising questions whether it will have enough supplies for other customers.

Mr Ahmed, however, said that Pakistan was also pursuing the proposed project to build a $7.4-billion pipeline from Iran that would also supply India. Future demand would justify both the Iran and Turkmenistan projects being built, he added.

Officials from Pakistan, Iran and India will meet in New Delhi next month to negotiate gas pricing before finalizing a deal to pipe Iranian gas to India through Pakistan, he said.

Mr Ahmed said he hoped to convince the Bush administration that the Iran project was worth pursuing. The energy adviser is leading a high-level Pakistani delegation to Washington for the first round of US-Pakistan energy talks that begin here on Monday.

But a senior US State Department official, Paul Simons, told reporters that the Bush administration was against the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. The Turkmen gas pipeline, however, “deserves a close look,” he added.

“The government of Pakistan is well aware of the fact that we are not in favour of Pakistan moving ahead with this pipeline to Iran,” he said.

Instead, Mr Simons said Pakistan should tap domestic natural gas supplies, build transmission lines to import power from neighbours like Kyrgyzstan and ship in LNG from places like Qatar, Indonesia and Nigeria.

But the prime minister’s energy adviser said meeting Pakistan’s rising demand through LNG “is probably not a realistic assessment,” he later said, because major world exporters like Qatar have committed future supplies elsewhere.