TEHRAN, Feb 2: Iran said on Saturday that the petroleum ministers of India and Pakistan would come to Tehran later this month to discuss a multi-billion dollar project to transport Iranian gas to India via Pakistan.

“We have invited the Indian petroleum minister with the Pakistanis to come here ... and they have accepted,” Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari told a news conference.

“We are making efforts to make it a tripartite deal or it will become a bilateral one,” he said, adding that talks were due to be held between February 14 to 16.

In November, 2007, Iran gave India a four-month deadline to formally agree its participation after finalising the content of the 7.4-billion-dollar gas export deal with Pakistan.

Talks on the much-delayed project to supply gas to India and to Pakistan itself through a 2,600-kilometre pipeline began in 1994 but were stalled by tensions between India and Pakistan.—AFP