Pakistan to protect gas pipeline for India .

Pakistan would provide India with security guarantees for a pipeline from the South Pars gas complex in Iran as an incentive to join, officials said in Mexico.

'We will guarantee for the safe delivery of gas (at Pakistan-India border),' said Mohammed Chaudhry Ejaz, the deputy petroleum secretary for Pakistan told the Press Trust of India.

Pakistan and Iran signed off March 16 on a long-delayed pipeline project to transport gas from the giant South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf. India balked on the project on a variety of concerns, including Western incentives and pricing mechanisms.

Dubbed the Peace Pipeline because of the India-Pakistan connection, New Delhi showed apprehension over the safety of the pipeline following the November attacks in Mumbai and added tensions between the two nuclear-armed foes.

New Delhi, however, stated its interest in the project earlier this year, as well as a rival project from Turkmenistan.

Pakistani officials, for their part, said they need the project to stave off a lingering energy crisis in their country.

'We have up to nine hours of power outages and we need Iranian gas to bridge this rising deficit,' said the secretary at an energy conference in Mexico. 'It is in our interest that the pipeline is safe and we get the gas to generate power and fuel industries,'