Kissinger urges India to shun IPI project

NEW DELHI—The visiting former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has asked India on Wednesday not to have energy ties with Iran which is facing international sanctions over its nuclear programme.
Kissinger conveyed this mind of Washington to Indian Minister for Petroleum Minister Murli Deora in an hour-long meeting with him. India has been facing pressure from the United States for quite some-time not to proceed with Iran-Pakistan-India Pipeline project.
The US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who also met Indian leadership here, has reportedly asked India to keep away from the project. “We’re hoping that India won’t move forward on [the pipeline],” a US treasury official said.
The US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice who flew in to New Delhi two years back to tell Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government not to proceed with the India-Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline project. She left, promising to pave the way for a civil nuclear cooperation agreement.
The US Treasury Undersecretary for international affairs David McCormick told a press conference in Washington “We’re hoping that India won’t move forward on this.”
A leading Indian English daily reported while quoting David McCormick as saying “we think at a time when the world should be imposing greater discipline on its interactions with [Iranian] companies and financial institutions and the Iranian government more broadly, that this is not the right path forward.—Agencies