'Pakistan to go ahead with gas pipeline with or without India'

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said that the pipeline, an energy corridor linking Pakistan and India with Iran, Qatar and the Middle East, would also bring a political dividend by helping create interdependent relations between the two nuclear neighbours.

But he told a breakfast meeting on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that Pakistan would need to import much more gas over the next few years just to meet its own needs.

He said he had told the Indian government: "If you come along, we would be delighted to work with you.

"If for some reason you don't (take part), Pakistan is going to go ahead anyway, so tell us when you're ready."

The 1,600-kilometer (1,000-mile) pipeline is designed to transfer gas from Iran to India through Pakistan's southwestern Baluch-istan province, which has been under a low-level tribal insurgency.

Speaking at an earlier press conference, Aziz said that as well as talks with Iran and Qatar, he was also talking to officials in Turkmenistan as the shortest route might pass through that central Asian republic, depending on which of three construction projects was chosen.

"If all hands are on deck we could do the full project in three to five years," Aziz said.

"This project can create history and really change the energy dynamics of the region ... even the diplomatic relations and the political dimensions of the region," he predicted.

Aziz said he would discuss the 4.05-billion-dollar (3.1-billion-euro) project when he met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the fringes of a February 6-7 summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooper-ation.

Negotiations on the pipeline began in 1994, but made little headway owing to tensions between Pakistan and India which have fought three wars since gaining independence in 1947 from Britain.

However, improving relations between India and Pakistan since April 2003 have revived hopes the project could go ahead.