The $2.5-billion Myanmar-Bangladesh-India gas pipeline project may get an impetus as Dhaka is ready to hold fresh negotiations with New Delhi on the three conditions put forward by it for signing the tri-nation agreement.Talking to The Indian Express, advisor to the energy and mineral division, Government of Bangladesh, Mahmudur Rahman said, ‘‘We are open to negotiate on the three issues and are not saying that all of these should be agreed to by India. We may agree on, say, two of these. But for anything substantive, negotiations must begin’’.Earlier, Bangladesh had put forward three conditions — providing for a transit facility through India to facilitate transmission of hydro-electricity from Nepal and Bhutan to Bangladesh; a corridor through India for trade between Bangladesh and Nepal/Bhutan; and measures to reduce the $2 billion trade imbalance between Bangladesh and India.Though there was no official statement from Bangladesh on which condition can be dropped, sources in the Indian petroleum ministry hinted at the possibility of the most contentious issue, relating to trade imbalance, being removed from the pre-conditions.The pipeline issue is expected to come up for discussion between the two countries when Indian External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh is scheduled to be in Dhaka from August 6.The proposed route for the pipeline is from the Shwe (offshore gas source) to Arakan (Rakhine) state in Myanmar into the Indian states of Mizoram & Tripura before crossing Bangladesh to reach Kolkata in West Bengal.Indian High commission officials in Dhaka added that India is not averse to any of the issues being raised by Bangladesh. However, the only bone of contention is that while Dhaka feels that discussions on these issues should form part of the trilateral dialogue, New Delhi is of the view that such bilateral issues cannot be part of trilateral agreements.Reacting to this, Rahman said bilateral discussions have to part of this trilateral dialogue. ‘‘We are ready to negotiate on the number of issues but discussions on these issues has to be part of the trilateral dialogue.’’Indian High Commissioner, Dhaka, Veena Sikri said efforts are being made to see that Bangladesh discusses the pipeline project purely on commercial terms without attaching bilateral strings. ‘‘We don’t see any reason why some of the issues be set as conditions for a commercial project where India is ready to pay a transit fee,’’ she said.Bangladesh is expected to get $125 million as transit fee in this project. Further, through this pipeline, Bangladesh will also be able to transfer gas supplies from its eastern region to west.
