India’s Economic Times reports Khan as saying in New Delhi on Friday that Pakistan could offer India pipeline transmission facilities for natural gas imports from Turkmenistan and Qatar.

Pakistan could consider natural gas imports for both domestic consumption and for India from sources other than Iran.

“India, I believe, has had apprehensions in the past. We can consider gas from Turkmenistan and also through an undersea pipeline from Qatar.We are studying both options of imports and we have no objections in the gas passing through to India,” said the minister, who was in New Delhi to attend a meeting of G20 group of 20 developing countries.

However, he declined comment on the issue of security raised last week by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on India’s proposal to import gas from Iran, via pipeline passing through Pakistan.

Meanwhile, The India News reports that Britain does not share the United States’ concerns over the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.

It quotes Britain’s deputy high commissioner to Pakistan, Simon Butt, as saying he believed the project would bolster ties between New Delhi and Islamabad.

“I am not sure that we will have the same kind of objections that (US Secretary of State Condoleezza) Rice expressed for understandable reasons.”

Besides viewing it as a commercial project, Britain also considered it a project that could bolster ties between India and Pakistan. The operations of British oil giant BP in Iran was another factor.

Rice last week expressed concern over the US$4.5 billion pipeline project, citing American sanctions on Tehran and differences on several issues.