Pakistan Can Face US Santions On Proposed Gas Pipeline From Iran

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday warned that Pakistan could face US sanctions if it pressed ahead with its proposed gas pipeline project with Iran.
“[This] would be particularly damaging to Pakistan because their economy is already quite shaky,” Clinton told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations while answering a question. “This additional pressure that the United States would be compelled to apply would further undermine their economic status.” With roughly $1 billion allocated in the State Department’s budget request for fiscal 2013 to help Pakistan address its energy challenges, Congressman Jerry Lewis, a Republican, asked Clinton about the US response if the Pakistan-Iran pipeline project proceeds. “We have been very clear in pointing out the consequences of building this pipeline,” she said, adding that sanctions could be triggered if the pipeline is constructed either as an Iranian project or a joint project with Islamabad.
The US, according to her, has been working with Pakistan for three years to help upgrade its existing energy infrastructure and is encouraging Pakistan to seek alternatives to the pipeline, namely one with Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and India.
“We think that that is a better alternative, both in terms of predictability and to avoid doing business with Iran,” Clinton said.
Earlier, Hillary Clinton told a Congressional panel ‘Pakistan is making progress towards restricting the transport to Afghanistan of fertilisers’, which are used in making Impoverished Explosive Devices (IEDs), a major cause of US casualties in the Afghan war, but needs to ‘do more’.
Responding to a question during a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the top US diplomat said she has raised this issue at the highest level including last week when she met Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar in London.
‘I discussed it at some length last Thursday in London with the Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. And it’s very clear they need to do more. And they need to do more for themselves’, Clinton told Senator Robert Casey, who raised the issue.
‘I mean our concern is very much rooted in the terrible attacks that take place in Afghanistan against our soldiers, against other targets there, but, you know, in 2011, there were 1,966 terrorist attacks in Pakistan, which resulted in 2,391 deaths, the vast majority of which were the IEDs’, she added. ‘So our point to Pakistan has been this is not about the US, NATO, ISAF, Afghanistan alone; this is also about you. Now, what they have done is they have introduced legislation in their National Assembly. I have been told they expect to pass it shortly’, Clinton told the lawmakers.
Elaborating, Clinton said: ‘They’re working, actually, with their Afghan counterparts to improve coordination on the border to restrict fertiliser imports. We’ve had several productive meetings between the government of Pakistan, the government of Afghanistan and ISAF over the past year’. ‘So we’re making progress. I just have to say that when I raised it directly with the very highest levels of the military and civilian governance in Pakistan, there was a lot of confusion. I mean they did not understand how fertiliser that many of them told me they use on their own farms was such a problem’, she said. ‘So I explained to them after the (1995) Oklahoma City bombing, we had to reach the same conclusion and we had to go after the use of fertiliser. And so they are, like, 10 to 15 years behind us in terms of thinking through what this means and how to do it. So they’re making progress, but they’re not doing enough and they’re not moving fast enough’, Clinton added.
Another Senator wanted to know whether a firewall has been built to prevent diversion of US aid money by Pakistan for other purposes, such as their nuclear programme. ‘Well, we certainly have constructed one’, Clinton told Senator Jim Webb. ‘I think the fair question is: Even with a firewall, if you provide aid for other purposes, does that permit the government then to divert funds that should be spent for health, education, energy, etc to that programme? And it remains a serious concern of mine’, she said.
Hillary said that part of the ongoing dialogue with Pakistan is around the reforms they need to make for their own people, she said, adding, that the latter over the years has invested a great deal in its military. ‘They have invested the great bulk of their revenues into their military establishment, including their nuclear programme, to the great cost of providing basic education, health care, electricity the kinds of things that would demonstrate to the people of Pakistan they had a government that number one, cared about them; and number two, produced for them’, she added.
‘So I can answer the direct question: Yes, we have a firewall, but that isn’t the end of the dialogue — as you know very well. And we’re going to keep pressing hard to make sure that, you know, the IMF and the World Bank and we and others are working toward the kind of reforms that are going to stabilise Pakistan for the long term’, she said.