New Delhi, Dec 13 (IANS) Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon will go to Tehran Saturday on a two-day visit in an attempt to arrest the drift in ties between the two countries that came under strain after India voted against the Iranian nuclear programme over two years ago.
Menon is likely to call on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and discuss with them a wide array of bilateral, regional and global issues, official sources told IANS.
Menon will assure the Iranian leadership that despite its growing ties with the US, India is committed to deepen its relations with Iran with whom it shares centuries-old civilisational and historical ties.
A multi-billion-dollar tri-nation gas pipeline project to transport the Iranian gas via Pakistan to India will also be discussed, the sources told IANS. The project is presently stuck due to differences over the pricing of the Iranian gas and the issue of transit fee with Pakistan.
The external affairs ministry has yet to officially announce Menon’s visit.
This will be the first visit from the Indian side to Iran after the Dec 3 release of the US National Intelligence Estimate report that said Tehran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.
The report radically revised world opinion about the nature of Tehran’s atomic energy programme, accused by the West of developing nuclear weapons.
Back home, the report may provide a handle to the Left allies of the government to question afresh India’s vote against Iran, which it had criticised earlier as a betrayal of a friendly non-aligned country and a sign of the alleged pro-US tilt of New Delhi’s foreign policy.
India voted against the Iranian nuclear programme in the International Atomic Enegry Agency (IAEA) in 2005 and again in 2006 on grounds that it needed to do more to clarify the nature of its atomic programme. However, New Delhi has consistently advocated diplomacy and opposed sanctions to solve the Iranian nuclear imbroglio.
In a bid to ally the concerns of the Left parties, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told parliament early this month that India’s vote against Iran was spurred by the larger consideration so that the Iranian dossier was not referred to the UN Security Council.