Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar emphasised that any move to advance Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline will be decided by the Pakistani government and that Islamabad will never accept foreign dictation.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar said Tuesday that the country will not give in to any outside pressure to stop building a much-delayed gas pipeline with neighbouring Iran.

“We will not let anyone use their veto,” Senator Dar told reporters in Islamabad, without naming the United States.

Dar, who is also Pakistan’s deputy prime minister, also the country is determined to meet its rising energy needs based on national interests.

The minister emphasised that any move to advance Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline will be decided by the Pakistani government and that Islamabad will never accept foreign dictation.

Pakistan and Iran signed a Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement in June 2009 for a pipeline that would supply 750 million to 1,000 million cubic feet per day of natural gas from Iran’s South Pars gas field to energy-starved Pakistan. The gas pipeline is a proposed 1,900-km pipeline project.

While Iran claimed in 2011 that it had finished constructing the pipeline on its side of the border, making gas ready to export, construction delays continue on the Pakistani side, primarily for fear of invoking US sanctions.

The US has threatened Pakistan with sanctions if it goes ahead with a plan to build the pipeline to import gas from Iran.

The Biden administration has repeatedly said it does not support the Pakistan-Iran pipeline as Tehran is under US sanctions for its nuclear programme.

“The government will decide what, when, and how to do anything based on Pakistan’s interests. It cannot be dictated to us,” Dar said in his statement Tuesday.

In February, Pakistan’s outgoing caretaker government approved building a small patch of the pipeline from the Iranian border into Pakistani territory to avoid having to pay Iran some $18 billion in penalties for years of project delays.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government, which took office in March, has not begun construction on the project.

The pipeline received only a passing mention in a lengthy joint statement issued at the end of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to Pakistan in late April, prompting speculation the project was not on track.

“We have to watch our interest. We have to look at our commitments,” Dar said, rejecting the notion that Pakistan was delaying the project under US pressure. However, he conceded the pipeline is “an issue that is quite complicated.”

Energy-starved and cash-strapped, Pakistan needs cheap fuel from its neighbour. The South Asian country of some 240 million people currently meets much of its needs with expensive oil and gas imports from Gulf countries.

Iran’s arch-rival Saudi Arabia, on whom Pakistan relies heavily for financial support, is also widely believed to be opposed to the pipeline.