President travels to Pakistan

Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov will travel to the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Wednesday for high level meetings with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai over a proposed 1,500 km pipeline linking his country to Pakistan via Afghanistan. Turkmenistan, with its immense gas reserves, has long sought alternative routes to international markets. Ashgabat currently has only one major export route through Russia, but provides small volumes of gas to neighbouring Iran. Should the project through Afghanistan - which shares a 744 km border with Turkmenistan - become a reality, Niyazov may achieve a long-held dream of securing his country’s future development. The project calls for oil and gas to be piped from the southern Daulatabad fields of Turkmenistan across 764 km of Afghan territory, subsequently linking up with Pakistan’s gas grid and onward to the Indian Ocean. According to the Pakistani daily ‘Dawn’ newspaper, Daulatabad has estimated gas reserves of 45 trillion cubic feet. Kabul, for its part, would provide security for the pipeline through its territory for which it would receive a yet to be calculated - but much needed income. While a Trans-Afghan pipeline certainly has its merits, gaining support for it won’t be easy. According to a Reuters report on 24 April, Niyazov has already called upon the United Nations to lend support to the plan saying it would help rebuild the war-torn nation. "Thanks to this project, Afghanistan would gain 12,000 jobs, and 12 percent of its profits," he said. "I have proposed that the United Nations approve the plan. This pipeline must not have a political character," he explained. According to a report by the Center for Research on Globalization (CRG) published by the web-based Eurasia net on 12 December, the defeat of the Taliban has been reviving a debate in Afghanistan about widening international access to Central Asia’s vast energy resources. While a few observers argue that such pipelines might speed Afghanistan’s reconstruction, others say that an attempt to establish Afghanistan as a transit hub for energy exports could provoke a collision of interests among key power brokers in the region. Commenting on this week’s summit, Ahmed Rashid, author of the international bestseller entitled ‘Taliban – Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia’ told IRIN from the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore that while the pipeline was feasible, it was a bit premature at this point. "These countries are jumping the gun with this meeting," he said. "While the intention is there, I can’t see this happening until the [Afghan] central government has extended its writ," Rashid maintained. "It’s simply not practical. There is no stability, no infrastructure. It’s the oil companies that have to set this up. Although the oil companies are watching the situation closely, they have no intention of getting burnt again as they did during the time of Taliban and Masood government," he explained. Earlier the US company Unocal expressed interest in the project, only to withdraw in 1998 citing civil war and cost uncertainties. Indeed, financing for the massive project remains dubious. The pipeline, which would have a capacity of 15 to 30 billion cubic metres of gas a year, is expected to cost between US $2 and US $2.5 billion – if not more. And while World Bank officials in the Afghan capital Kabul have told IRIN no official discussions on the matter had been held, according to an AFP report on 15 May, World Bank chief James Wolfensohn told reporters he had held discussions about financing such a endeavor. "I have spoken to a number of people concerning a possible pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan -either out through a port in Pakistan or through India," Wolfensohn said. "We have expressed interest in that but I think the principles need to discuss that further. We have said that we are ready to discuss it when they are ready to discuss it," he explained. The World Bank was not taking the entrepreneurial role, but were it to come up they would look into it, he added. The two-day meeting between the three governments will conclude on Friday.