THE Pakistan government has said that the work on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline will begin early next year, as discussions among the three nations about laying the pipeline were "on track". "In our view, a project structure should be in position by the end of November, and it should pave the way for a bilateral framework agreement by the end of December, and the construction of the pipeline should commence in early 2006," Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Naeem Khan is reported to have said at a recent news briefing. He further said that Islamabad believed the 2670-km pipeline project would be an "important economic CBM" between Pakistan and India, and would also meet the energy requirements of the two countries. Mr Khan said that Islamabad would go ahead with the project in any case, "because we need this energy for our own requirements" to sustain a high level of economic growth achieved over the past few years. According to the spokesman, his country was also pursuing plans for similar pipelines from Turkmenistan and Qatar. "We are also exploring the possibility of the TAP (the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan) gas pipeline. Actually the negotiations are already taking place on that." The TAP project was conceived in the 1990s, but abandoned because of the civil war in Afghanistan. "We will also be looking at the possibility of having a gas pipeline from Qatar," Mr Khan added.