OTTAWA, June 21: A plan to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India has raised questions about the role of Canadian forces in defending the project, says a newspaper report.

According to Canada’s influential newspaper, the Globe and Mail, the $7.6-billion project runs right through Afghanistan’s volatile Kandahar province, where Canadian forces are in command of ISAF.

The newspaper said that to prepare for proposed construction by 2010, the Afghan government had reportedly given assurances it would clear the route of land mines, and make the path free of Taliban influence.

The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline enjoys support from Washington because the US government is eager to block a competing pipeline from Iran.

Energy economist John Foster said in a report that the Canadian government had long ignored the broader geopolitical aspects of the deployment of its forces in Afghanistan, even as Nato forces, including Canadian troops, could be called in to defend critical energy infrastructure.

Mr Foster – a former economist with Petro-Canada, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank – said the Canadian military could become embroiled in a “new great game” over energy security.

Canada’s conservative government has committed to keeping the Canadian forces in Afghanistan until 2011, although there is scepticism about the timetable’s length.

Last week, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher stressed that there “is a historic opportunity … of having an open Afghanistan that can act as a conduit for energy, ideas, people, trade, goods from Central Asia and other places down to the Arabian Sea”. Stephen Blank, a professor at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania, said the US government was eager to providing an alternative to the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.

“From the US viewpoint, the idea of blocking Iran is of paramount significance,” he said.