The US Monday made it clear to Pakistan that there was no "rethinking" in the Bush administration to extend nuclear energy cooperation to it on the lines of India and also said it has "serious reservations" about the proposed gas pipeline from Iran.
"Our strategic partnership with Pakistan does not include civilian nuclear energy," US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, who is in Islamabad to discuss Pakistan's energy needs as promised by US President George W Bush during his visit earlier in February, told reporters.
He said there was no rethinking on the part of the US administration about extending to Pakistan the Indo-US nuclear agreement reached between Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the American President's visit to India.
Bush said after meeting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on March 4 that they had discussed nuclear issues and that "Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories".
Referring to the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, Bodman said Washington has serious reservations over the project in view of the ongoing row over Iran's nuclear programme.
"Our country has had and continues to have significant problems with Iran. They seen to be building a military arsenal based on nuclear weapons and we are trying to prevent that," he said after meetings with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Foreign Minister Khurshid M Kasuri.
Bodman said US would encourage Pakistan's plans to build Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India pipeline and another from Qatar.
"Other pipeline projects are very good and we are ready to help," he said.
Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam later told reporters that Islamabad raised the issue of cooperation in the field of nuclear energy in Monday's meeting with Bodman.
Pakistan discussed the issue of nuclear energy with Bodman, Aslam said adding, it also raised the issue of cooperation in civilian use of nuclear technology and the discussions would continue.
Replying to a question on IPI, Aslam said Pakistan's stand was also well known.
Despite oft repeated statements that it would go ahead with IPI, Pakistan officially maintains that it is considering IPI, TAPI as well as Qatar gas pipelines and would decide on which one to opt for after evaluating the benefits.
Bodman also met Aziz after which the Pakistan prime minister said Pakistan would decide on the pipeline in its own national interest.
This is the second time the US has publicly shot down the proposed gas pipeline project.
In 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed US reservations over the project during her visit to New Delhi and Washington saying it could attract sanctions under US domestic laws.
During his March 4 visit to Islamabad, Bush sounded ambivalent about the project saying, "Our beef with Iran is not the pipeline; our beef with Iran is the fact that they want to develop a nuclear weapon."
