ASHKHABAD, Dec 17: A plan to lay a gas pipeline across Afghanistan from Turkmenistan to Pakistan is to be agreed in Ashkhabad at a summit at the end of December, Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister Yolly Gurbanmuradov.

The leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan had been due to sign an agreement on the pipeline in October, but the summit was delayed at the request of President Pervez Musharraf.

Gurbanmuradov said the ADB was conducting a study of the market for Turkmen gas, which would be completed in May 2003.

The pipeline to link the energy-rich Central Asia with Pakistan has been on the table for 20 years, but has been thwarted by two decades of conflict in Afghanistan and doubts about its feasibility.

A US energy company, Unocal, once led efforts to build the link, but its plans were scuppered in 1998, when US cruise missiles struck Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, leaving the project apparently aborted.

A Turkmen minister said on Tuesday that the construction of an ambitious pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan might be completed by 2005.

“The construction of the pipeline is planned to be completed in 2005,” said Tachberdy Tagiyev, Turkmenistan’s minister of oil and gas industry and mineral resources.

Some experts raise doubts about Pakistan’s ability to pay for the natural gas and question whether there is a market for the gas there.

Industry experts suggest that the project would only be feasible if it were to supply gas to India as well as Pakistan, although tensions between the two countries may rule out such an option.

Instability in Afghanistan also remains a problem.—AFP