Friday, June 17 2005 09:22 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: Voicing "concern" over the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, the United States has said that it was sharing its feelings with the two South Asian nations in a "constructive" manner and not in a "negative way".

"We have communicated our concerns to both Pakistan and India about this, but we have very positive relations with Pakistan and India," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Washington yesterday (Jun 16, 2005) when asked how seriously or what degree of opposition America really has towards the 2600 km-long pipeline project.

"The really amazing thing is that we have managed to have very positive relations with India that includes an increasing Defence cooperation relationship, and very positive relationships with Pakistan that includes Defence cooperation."

"And so I think it demonstrates that we are de-linking the India-Pakistan and I think it shows that, in a sense, they are too, because we find quite remarkable and very encouraging the move of Pakistan and India toward a greater rapprochement between them and we want to be supportive of those trends," she said.

Asked whether it was fair to say that the US was not likely to move towards sanctions if India and Pakistan were to go ahead with the pipeline project, Rice said, "Well, I think we are sharing our concerns in a constructive way with them and not in a negative way."

"One thing that is of concern to the countries in that region, and the US is, to have continuing discussions about the energy situation. Because these are growing economies and the Indian economy has to find energy supply and that is why we have an energy dialogue with the Indians," Rice said.

"So that we can help to talk about different forms of energy supply because we fully understand that they need to find it," she said.

However, Rice said, "We have made our concerns known about this specific circumstances."