ASHKHABAD The Turkmen mass media referred to the recent opening of Turkmenistan-Iran pipeline as a sign of "friendship and brotherhood" between the two nations.

The Turkmen national radio and television networks gave a good coverage to the news of the natural gas pipeline that joins the Artiq region, a hundred kilometers to the north of Ashkhabad, with Lotfabad border region of Iran.

A Turkmen daily the Neutral Turkmenistan,' wrote on Wednesday, "The volume of Turkmenistan's gas exports through Iran reached 5.5 million cubic meters ceiling with the opening of this pipeline, together with the Korpeche-Kordkouy pipeline' that became operational in 1997."

Turkmenistan wishes to export a much larger volume of its gas to Iran and other international markets through Iran. Based on that country's next ten-year development plan, Turkmenistan is counting on an annually 13 billion cubic meters of gas export to Iran.

The Turkmen President Saparmurad Nyiazov had a meeting with the Iranian deputy foreign minister in European and American affairs, after which it was announced in Tehran and Ashkhabad that the two countries had agreed to form expert teams to study the practical ways of increasing the volume of gas exports through the Korpeche-Kordkouy pipeline.

Turkmenistan's second natural gas pipeline through Iran was officially inaugurated on December 1.

According to the Turkmen Minister of Oil and Mines, Khoshgaldi Babayev, the volume of the Turkmen natural gas transferred through the above mentioned pipeline to Iran would reach 15 million cubic meters per year by the year 2001 and to 28 million a few years later.

He said so far some six billion cubic meters of Turkmenistan's natural gas has been exported to Iran through the Korpeche-Kordkouy pipeline.

(IRNA)