Islamabad: President Asif Ali Zardari has said that Pakistan's ties with Iran will not be "undermined" by any international pressure, asserting that Islamabad is determined to forge ahead with projects with Tehran, which include a strategic gas pipeline.
"We need to inter-depend on each other and a safe Pakistan is a prosperous Pakistan. Our bilateral relationships cannot be undermined by any international pressure of any kind," Zardari told a news conference that he addressed with his Afghan and Iranian counterparts after a trilateral summit.
Zardari was responding to a question on whether Pakistan and Iran would resist pressure from the world community to continue with the pipeline project.
The venture has come under a cloud due to sanctions imposed on Tehran over its nuclear programme.
He said Pakistan was "lobbying the world" on the pipeline project and its "point of view has been and is being looked at and is being accepted".
The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline aims to export a daily amount of 21.5 million cubic meters (or 8.7 billion cubic meters per year) of the Iranian natural gas to Pakistan.
Maximum daily gas transfer capacity of the 56-inch pipeline which runs over 900 km of Iran's soil from Asalouyeh in Bushehr Province to the city of Iranshahr in Sistan and Balochistan Province has been given at 110 million cubic meters. Iran has already constructed more than 900 km of the pipeline on its soil.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad endorsed Zardari's views and said: "All countries of the region know that the roots of problems do not exist in the region itself, these problems have been imposed on our region."
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