Turkmenistan was gearing up Wednesday to welcome leaders from neighboring Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and the PLO to mark three years of independence in the Central Asian state on Sept. 27, an embassy spokesman in Moscow said Wednesday.


Thursday's anniversary celebrations will coincide with the formal inauguration of a $7 billion natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Iran and Turkey to Europe, he said. Actual construction on the 4,400-kilometer pipeline will start May next year.


The pipeline is a pet project of Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov who wants to sell his rich oil and gas resources to hard-currency paying countries, rather than cash-strapped former Soviet republics. Existing pipelines serve Uzbekistan, Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine, who cannot pay their debts to Turkmenistan, a Western diplomat in Ashgabat said Wednesday.


Niyazov, a former communist first secretary who has promised to turn his country into "a new Kuwait," has pointedly kept Russia at arm's length while wooing his immediate neighbors and new Western friends. He was the only leader at the Commonwealth of Independent States summit in Moscow last Friday who did not sign Russia's memorandum on long-term integration within the CIS.


The Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on Tuesday contrasted Niyazov's lack of participation in Moscow to his activity at the Turkic summit in Istanbul just days before.


Less than a week later he is returning hospitality to Turkish President Suleyman Demirel who arrived in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat on Tuesday. "Turkey needs and wants Turkmenistan's gas as badly as Turkmenistan wants to sell it," the diplomat said.


Iran's President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is also flying in for the inauguration of the pipeline which Iran is co-funding, the Turkmen embassy spokesman said. Details of who will pay for the pipeline are not clear.