By IANS,
New Delhi: Iran Monday renewed its invitation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to visit Tehran as the two sides decided to scale up their counter-terror cooperation and give a push to the stalled tri-nation pipeline that also involves Pakistan.
External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna held delegation-level talks with his Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki on a range of bilateral and regional issues including energy security, trade, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and enhanced collaboration in science and technology.
Mottaki also called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and renewed President Mahmoud Ahmadinjead’s invitation to the Indian leader to visit Tehran. Dates will be worked out through diplomatic channels, official sources said.
In a clear signal that India wishes to expand its ties with Iran despite its international isolation over the nuclear issue, New Delhi decided to add more economic substance to the centuries-old civilisational ties.
Crude oil imports from Tehran form over 80 per cent of the $13 billion bilateral trade. New Delhi wants to diversify the trade basket by expanding exports aimed at Iran’s predominantly young population.
The discussions saw the two sides converging on tackling terrorism emanating from Pakistan and the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, official sources said.
They decided to expand their counter-terror cooperation through intelligence-sharing and coordination between their intelligence agencies, the sources said.
A horrific suicide attack in southeast Iran in October targeted the country’s Revolutionary Guards and was blamed on Pakistan-based Jundallah, a Sunni extremist outfit which claimed responsibility. It was the first time terror outfits in Pakistan targeted Iranian territory – a development that has led Tehran to deepen counter-terror cooperation with New Delhi.
Working together to ensure the stability of Afghanistan saw an articulation of similar concerns and positions by both sides, which are opposed to the Taliban and had backed the Northern Alliance in the run-up to the ouster of the then Taliban regime in 2001.
Both sides agreed that India and Iran have key role in stability of the region, the sources said.
The Indian side underlined its interest in speedily tying up arrangements for developing the Chabahar port in south Iran and an integrated railway line to Bam that would provide a direct trade route to Afghanistan and Central Asia
The $7.5 billion tri-nation pipeline that seeks to bring Iranian gas to the Indian border through Pakistan also figured in the discussions.
The Iranian side pressed for accelerating negotiations to resolve and address Indian concerns about the pricing of Iranian gas and the security of the pipeline, which is expected to pass through violence-prone areas of Pakistan. A joint working group will meet in New Delhi to resolve these issues.
This is the first high-level engagement between the two countries since the re-election of the United Progressive Alliance government and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and comes days before Manmohan Singh heads to Washington on a state visit.