India was admonished on Wednesday by a longtime friend in the US Congress for continuing its relationship with Iran.

New York Democratic Congressman Gary Ackerman, chairman of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans, said while he understood explanations about “India's historic ties with Iran,” he had a difficult time understanding why New Delhi was pursuing a gas pipeline with Iran and Pakistan.

Speaking at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee's subcommittee on West Asia and South Asia, Ackerman warned there were some areas of disagreement in the US-India relationship that “if left to fester could cut off our burgeoning relationship at the pass”. He listed India's relationship with Iran as one of these disagreements.

“I have heard about and understood from a wide variety of Indian government officials, India’s historic ties with Iran and its domestic political need not to alienate hundreds of millions of its Muslim citizens,” the Jewish-American congressman said, adding, “I have also heard and understood the arguments about India’s ever increasing needs for energy. But I hope that Indian officials will hear and understand the US view of Iran: that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional hegemony is a serious threat posed to international peace and stability in West Asia and the vital national security interests of the US”.

He said he believed that the Indian officials understood the US perspective on Iran and shared US opposition to Iran possessing nuclear weapons. “Their courageous IAEA votes demonstrate that,” he noted. India voted twice at the IAEA with the US on efforts to curbs Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The lawmaker said he had “a very difficult time understanding why India continues to pursue the gas pipeline deal with Iran and Pakistan at a time when other nations in the world are not just implementing UN-approved sanctions, which is India’s historic position, but are going further by cutting off access to banking services and discouraging other economic interactions with Iran”.

He said he was not suggesting India abandon its historically independent foreign policy, but added, “I am sure there are those in India who will accuse me of just that”. Ackerman explained he was merely suggesting that India joined the other nations who were doing more than just implementing UN sanctions in an effort to economically isolate Iran. “It is an effort that I believe is fully consistent with India’s historic support of multilateral institutions and cooperation,” he said. 

Washington, June 26
The Bush administration will lift some trade sanctions against North Korea and move to take it off the US terrorism blacklist — a remarkable turnaround in policy toward the communist regime, which President Bush once branded as part of an “axis of evil.”

North Korea handed over a long-awaited accounting of its nuclear work to Chinese officials today, fulfilling a key step in the denuclearisation process.

In exchange, the US is fulfilling its promise to erase trade sanctions under the Trading With the Enemy Act, and notify Congress that, in 45 days, it intends to take North Korea off the State Department list of nations that sponsor terrorism, White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

“The United States welcomes the North Korean declaration of its nuclear programs,” she said.

“North Korea has pledged to disable all its nuclear facilities and tomorrow will destroy the cooling tower of the Yongbyon reactor,” she said. It is turning over information “essential to verifying that North Korea is ending all of its nuclear programmes and activities.”

“There is still more work to be done in order for North Korea to end its isolation,” Perino said. “It must dismantle all of its nuclear facilities, give up its separated plutonium, and resolve outstanding questions on its highly enriched uranium and proliferation activities. It must end these activities in a fully verifiable way. “

The action, one step along the road to getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, comes after the United States and four other nations softened their demands on what North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had to declare, and waited an additional six months to see it.

Those seeking a tougher stance on the hardline regime, which has lied about its nuclear past before, are expected to view the latest declaration as part of a high-stakes diplomatic game. Others will label it a victory for the Bush administration. — AP

Kyoto, June 26
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today warned Zimbabwe's President against declaring victory in what she said would be an illegitimate run-off election this week.

Islamabad, June 26
China is keen on joining the $7.5 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project and will send a delegation to Pakistan for negotiations on the deal, a Pakistan petroleum ministry official said on Thursday.

“We had sent a formal proposal to China to join the project earlier this month and have received a positive response,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

He said that a Chinese delegation will soon visit Pakistan for initial talks and may also undertake a trip to Iran.

The IPI pipeline is a proposed 2,775-km-long pipeline to deliver natural gas from Iran to Pakistan and India. The official said that China has asked for some more information about the project, which Pakistan would be furnishing “very soon”.

When asked if Iran was willing to supply gas to China, the official said: “We invited China after seeking Iran’s consent.”

The project was mooted in 1990 with expectations that it will benefit both India and Pakistan, who do not have sufficient natural gas to meet their rapidly increasing domestic demand for energy. However, it was delayed due to several reasons, including New Delhi’s security concerns.

Pakistan, which is keen on buying gas because of its own diminishing gas reserves, is looking at China to make the project a reality if India decides to pull out.

During his last visit to China, President Pervez Musharraf had tried to convince his counterpart Hu Jintao to join the project.

The petroleum ministry official said that Pakistan had also asked the Chinese government to conduct a detailed feasibility study of the gas pipeline. There has been no progress on the project since a dialogue was held between Pakistan and India in Islamabad in April.

“We are very keen to undertake the project with India but we are no more getting any positive signals from Delhi,” said the official. — IANS

Lahore, June 26
A visiting Hurriyat Conference delegation was “barred” by Pakistani authorities from attending a reception organised in Lahore by people linked to banned militant outfit Lashker-e-Toiba apparently “not to annoy” India and Western powers. Hurriyat leaders, led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, were on their way to the reception on Wednesday night when a top government official asked them not to attend the event “hosted on the platform of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah”, the new organisation set up by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of the LeT.

The Hurriyat team was “barred from the reception only to avoid annoying Western quarters and Delhi”, ‘The News’ quoted a guest attending the reception as saying.

Those who attended the reception waited for over two hours before Saeed told them that the Hurriyat team would not be participating in it, the report said.

Saeed said the Jamaat “did not want to cause problems for the guests (Hurriyat leaders) or for the cause of Kashmir....”

He hinted that domestic political problems in Pakistan had diverted attention from the Kashmir issue and vowed that the “jehad would continue.”

The Hurriyat leaders are currently visiting Pakistan at the invitation of foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi ahead of Qureshi’s visit to India beginning June 27. — PTI