Menon meets Iran president, reviews ties

New Delhi
8 March 2011

The disrepair in its relationship with Iran continues to haunt India as it
struggles to reconcile to the new political situation obtaining in West Asia and the Arab
world.

There is a view that the political unrest sweeping across much of the oil-rich Sunni Arab
countries has strengthened Shiite Iran's hand, and, India, therefore, should arrest the
drift in the relationship without further delay.

Ties with Iran became a casualty of the India-US nuclear deal, and it has not looked up
since.

India is equally hardpressed to find a satisfactory solution of making oil payments to
Iran, which is the second largest source of oil imports after Saudi Arabia.

India has turned to the Germany-based European-Iranian Trade Bank to route the
payments but the US and Israel want the practice to be discontinued as the bank
allegedly facilitated Iran's proliferation activities.

Any uncertainty in the Arab world would only increase India's reliance on the Persian
Gulf for energy security.

These and other issues would have been on top of national security adviser
Shivshankar Menon's mind as he travelled to Tehran this week for meetings with
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi, and secretary of
Iran's supreme national security council Saeed Jalili.

A statement available on the website of the Iranian president's office quoted Menon as
telling Ahmadinejad when they met on Monday that many of the predictions he
(Ahmadinejad) had made about the political and economic developments in the world had
become a reality today; the world order was changing, and it has necessitated
increasing relations between Iran and India.

For his part, Mr Ahmadinejad referred to the significant roles Iran and India will be
playing in future to note that "our two nations' cultures and origins are what the world
needs today."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has shied away from visiting Iran, but he is likely to
travel there in 2012 for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit to be hosted in Tehran.

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