- MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and Iran pledged Wednesday to strengthen bilateral
economic links, especially in the energy-rich Caspian Sea region. In comments
likely to be scrutinised in Washington, Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny
Primakov and Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi also praised U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan's success in brokering a deal to end the Iraq crisis and reiterated
their opposition to the use of military force. ``The political will exists
between the leadership of our countries to increase mutual cooperation
in the economic and political fields and on the international stage,''
Kharrazi told a joint news conference with Primakov. Kharrazi is on a two-day
visit to Moscow and will meet Prime
-
- Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin Thursday.
He said the two countries were working closely together to promote stability
in the Middle East and in Central Asia, particularly in Afghanistan and
the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan. Both have suffered years of civil
war. Kharrazi stressed the need to resolve the vexed issue of the
-
- Caspian Sea's formal status to allow
an orderly development of its rich oil and natural gas resources. ``In
order to avoid chaos we must in the near future work out the final status
of the Caspian in a way that is mutually acceptable to all sides,'' he
said. Iran and Russia have long argued that the Caspian is a lake,
-
- not a sea, and therefore the common property
of all adjacent states, which also include the former Soviet republics
of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Moscow and Tehran say all projects
should be developed jointly. The other three littoral states say the Caspian
should be divided into national sectors and exploited independently. Azerbaijan
is already benefitting from the first production by an $8 billion consortium
led by Norway's Statoil AS and British Petroleum off the Azeri coast. The
ministers said they had a common approach on the Iraq crisis, where Moscow
has been at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to defuse the tense standoff
between the United Nations and Baghdad over U.N. arms inspections. Primakov
and Kharrazi hailed Annan's 11th-hour success in averting an immediate
U.S.-led air strike against Iraq by clinching a deal with President Saddam
Hussein to allow inspectors unlimited access to suspected sites of biological
and chemical weapons. ``We were against any military strikes before (the
Annan deal) and now such action would be all the more unjustifiable,''
Primakov said. In comments sure to please his Russian hosts, Kharrazi said
the Annan deal showed the time had passed when one power could unilaterally
dictate conditions to other countries. Russia, shorn of its superpower
status since the collapse of
-
- Soviet communism, has been critical of
U.S. domination of the post-Cold War world. Washington has been wary of
the rapprochement between its old rival Russia and Iran, a state it accuses
of sponsoring terrorism and seeking nuclear arms. Iran denies the U.S.
charges. Primakov said Kharrazi had assured him Iran had no plans to acquire
weapons of mass destruction. Russia has refused to abandon a $800 million
contract to build Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant despite U.S. and Israeli
fears that the unit could provide nuclear arms technology to Tehran. Iran
says its nuclear program is strictly civilian and monitored by the United
Nations. Wednesday Interfax news agency quoted Russian military and diplomatic
sources as saying Moscow might reconsider pledges it has made not to conclude
fresh deals with Iran to provide arms if the United States launched military
action against Iraq. Officials were not immediately available to comment
on the report, which said Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin had
given an assurance to Washington that Moscow would sell arms to Tehran
solely under the terms of an old Soviet-era accord.
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