30 August IranExpert

Confusion over US stance on Iran-Armnia pipeline

Iran continues building the Neka-Tehran pipeline by which it intends deliver Kazakh and Turkmen oil to its refineries despite the US Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones statement that the USA will not allow transportation of Kazakh oil through Iran.

Elizabeth Jones, head of the department of European affairs,who used to be a US presidential adviser on Caspian issues, said that Iran had no pipeline to transport Kazakh oil and it was unlikely that such a pipeline would be built. In this connection, the only alternative route for Caspian oil reserves is the Aktau-Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

Sources in Armenia said today that the statements made by US Under-Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones during her official visit to Yerevan were not answers to current problems. On the contrary, they have raised new and questionable problems.

Mrs Jones's statements and negative comments attitude towards the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline construction project was criticised by the Armenian government and the Armenian Presidential Press Secretary Vage Gabrielyan "This issue was not discussed during the meeting between President Robert Kocharyan and Elizabeth Jones." However the Iran pipelind issue was discussed in more detail with the in Mrs Jones's meeting at the Armenian Foreign Ministry.

Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Dzyunik Agadzhanyan said "Mrs Jones expressed her country's viewpoint regarding the US law limiting investments by the Iranian side. Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan presented our country's approach towards this issue and we think that this law and its restrictions have nothing to do with the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline programme."