Islamabad has decided to approach Washington to seek a waiver on the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project, Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik said on Monday. \u201cPakistan will vigorously present its case and will try to seek exemption from US sanctions by presenting technical and political arguments,\u201d he said in an informal conversation with the media. In February this year, the caretaker government had decided to complete the gas line project in its territory under two phases and carved out a plan to first lay the 81km part of the pipeline from Gwadar, a point where Iran has already laid its part of the pipeline from the gas field. Iran has already extended the 180-day deadline till September 2024 to Pakistan. If Islamabad authorities fail to positively respond, Tehran will move Paris-based International Arbitration seeking a penalty of $18 billion. In today\u2019s media interaction, the petroleum minister said Pakistan will also engage in lobbying to obtain the US waiver to complete the much-delayed gas line project in its territory. Malik said the country will start construction on the gas pipeline project soon. The previous caretaker set-up decided against filing the application to obtain US waiver in view of the geopolitical situation, sources said. A ministerial oversight committee made decisions related to the Pak-Iran gas pipeline project, they added. The Biden administration has set a goal to prevent the construction of Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline while also communicating to Islamabad about its red lines on Tehran\u2019s nuclear proliferation ambitions. \u201cWe have warned them about our red lines, legislative, but also in terms of how we cooperate with Pakistan,\u201d Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu told the Congressional panel during the Congressional hearing on Pakistan. \u201cIf they get in bed with Iran, it will be very serious for our relationship,\u201d Lu said when Congressman Brad Schneider asked about the US messaging about Pakistan\u2019s engagement with Tehran on security matters, especially in the context of mutual concerns of nuclear proliferation in Iran\u2019s nuclear program. Iran and its relations with Pakistan, especially in terms of the planned gas-pipeline, remained a subject of interest for many members of the congressional panel at the hearing. The project has been facing delays since 2014. In January, Iran issued a third notice to Islamabad, renewing its intention to move the arbitration court for not laying the pipeline as part of the IP gas line project. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Islamabad has decided to approach Washington to seek a waiver on the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project, Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik said on Monday. \u201cPakistan will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15693,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}