EurasiaNet: What about a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline, which Unocal was interested in during the mid-1990s? That idea has been resurfacing lately in various commentaries and analyses.
Mann: [Turkmen] President Saparmyat Niyazov raised this with me when I was in Ashgabat a few weeks ago. I repeated to him what I had been saying for years when I was ambassador to Turkmenistan. The most serious problems for a pipeline taking Turkmenistan's gas through Pakistan - to anywhere - have nothing to do with Afghanistan. They concern, rather, the financial situation in Pakistan, the continued heavy regulation of natural gas prices in Pakistan, and the fact that prospects for Pakistani exports to India are less than sure. All these elements make the downstream from Turkmenistan very difficult, and none of them has anything to do with Afghanistan - which is a separate, large problem [snip]