India will not participate in a proposed natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan as it would cross Pakistan over land, providing Islamabad an opportunity to disrupt supplies if tension between the two escalates. India’s non-participation puts a question mark over the project since the consortium of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan (TAP) had concluded at a meeting on July 9-10 in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat that ‘‘India could be the principal market for the Turkmenistan’s gas’’.That it was the first such proposal to be backed by a multilateral agency—the Asian Development Bank (ADB)—failed to cut much ice with New Delhi. ‘‘ADB’s presence is unlikely to change Pakistan’s behaviour which is both unpredictable and unreliable. There is every possibility of Pakistan disrupting supplies and using the pipeline as a leverage against us,’’ said sources. It would also be foolhardy to join hands with Islamabad on economic issues while it foments terrorism in India, they added.Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had also underlined the Government’s tough line when, at the public meeting in New Delhi on Friday to mark three years of his Government, he said, ‘‘Our neighbouring country is fast developing into a terrorist nation’’ that ‘‘kept sending terrorists into India’’.The pipeline is the second one to be hampered by strained India-Pakistan relations. Islamabad blocked the Iran-India pipeline from crossing its economic coastal zone, prompting New Delhi to consider an offshore route outside Pakistan’s coastal boundary.ADB approached India soon after it was mandated as the project development partner asking New Delhi to participate in the project to export gas from the Dauletabad-Donmez fields of Turkmenistan across landlocked Afghanistan to a terminus in Karachi through a 1,600-km pipeline.It said that it recognised India’s security concerns over steady gas supply, but added that ‘‘this can be discussed and appropriate mechanisms to minimise and mitigate such risks be devised once India indicates its willingness to participate in the project’’.ADB had indicated that if India were to consider buying gas, the supply could be about 42 billion cubic metres per day for a contract period of 25 years starting within four years after signing the contract. The gas would be priced between $2.4 to $3.0 per million British thermal units and its delivery at a mutually-agreed location in northern Rajasthan or southern Punjab at the Indo-Pak border, it said.In another setback, the summit during which the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan were expected to sign the framework agreement on the pipeline was postponed indefinitely today. Among the reasons cited by Turkmen authorities: the formation of a government and questions raised by the ADB on financial aspects of the plan.
