Belarus eager to boost cooperation with Iran
TEHRAN - A senior Belarusian economic official voiced her country's enthusiasm for the promotion of economic ties with Iran, particularly in stock
exchanges sector.
In a meeting between Managing Director of the National Depository
Center of Belarus Valentina Timoshenko and the representatives of the Iranian Central Securities Depository and Settlement Funds Company (SAMAT), the Belarusian official pointed to the membership of Iran and Belarus
stock exchanges in the Federation of Euro-Asian Stock Exchanges (FEAS)
and said through transfer of the experiences of each other the required infrastructures will be provided for the cooperation of stock exchanges of the
two countries.
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Iran calls for expansion of ties with Norway
TEHRAN - Iranian Vice-President for Legal Affairs Elham Aminzadeh in a meeting with Norwegian Ambassador to Tehran Odyssey Norheim on Sunday called for
the further broadening of mutual cooperation. "Iran welcomes further expansion of
cooperation with Norway in political, economic and cultural fields," Aminzadeh said
during the meeting in Tehran on Sunday. She underlined a bright future for the two
countries' ties through interaction in cultural, social, legal and energy fields. The vicepresident pointed to the West's support for the terrorist factions in the region, and said,
"I hope that the western countries will relinquish their support for the terrorist groups."
The Norwegian ambassador pointed to the status quo of Oslo-Tehran mutual
cooperation, and said, "The time is now ripe for improving Norway-Iran relations
and the two countries will have high-level negotiations in the near future."
ISSN : 1353 8838 No. 4781, TUESDAY, Feb 10, 2015
Iran nuclear talks all about 'certainty’
TEHRAN - Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif says that parties
engaged in Iran’s nuclear negotiations need an “element
of certainty” in order to yield
results as the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program “has
always been peaceful”.
“The agreement will have
an element of certainty for
everybody,” Zarif told Press
TV correspondent in the
southern German city of Mu-
nich on Sunday.
The Iranian top diplomat
elaborated on the notion
of certainty by saying that
the nature of Iran’s nuclear
program has always been
peaceful and will remain so
in future.
Zarif said that economic
sanctions imposed on Iran
over its nuclear activities
have not achieved their intended results.
“If we started with 200
$5.181bn investments in
Persian Gulf free trade zone
TEHRAN – Managing director of Persian Gulf Mineral and Metallic Industries
Free Trade Zone of Bandar
Abbas said on Sunday that
the industrial investments in
that zone amount to 5 billion
and 181 million dollars.
Masoud Hendian said in
an interview with IRNA
that 3.281 billion dollars of
the investments have been
absorbed in the free trade
zone and are in productivity
phase now.
'1.9 billion dollars of the
investments are made in
industrial, mineral, petrochemical and upper and
lower energy consuming
industry chain, which are
under construction, or the
installment of their facilities
is underway.
The managing director of
Persian Gulf Mineral and
Metallic Industries Free
Zone of Bandar Abbas said
that a number of the investment projects are ready to
begin production, worth
3.7 billion dollars. According to programs of the Persian Gulf Free Zone, the
amount of steel produced
in Hormuzgan province
will within the next couple
of years exceed 10 million
tons a year.
The Persian Gulf Free
Zone is located at a 13 kilometer distance to the West
of Iran's southern Bandar
Abbas port city.
Iran set to boost steel
production
TEHRAN - Iran says it
has invested more than two
billion dollars in its steel industry as the country plans to
build new facilities to boost
steel production capacity.
USD2.2bn has been allocated to funding seven
new steel projects across
the country, Iran's Minister
of Industry, Mine and Trade
Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh was quoted by the Iranian
daily Ebtekar as saying.
Nematzadeh gave assurances that Iran’s steel output
will increase and predicted
that the Islamic Republic will
be able to produce 55 million
tons of crude steel per year
within 10 years.
Meanwhile, Iranian Mines
and Mining Industries Development and Renovation
Organization (IMIDRO) unveiled a comprehensive plan
aimed at increasing steel production capacity in southern
Iran.
According to IMIDRO,
new steel-producing plants
will be established in Chabahar, Qeshm and Bandar Abbas port cities.
Under the comprehensive
plan, Iran’s steel production
capacity will expand by 11.6
million tons per year.
Back in January, Iran announced that it had started
talks with South Korean companies to invest in steel projects in the country’s south.
Mehdi Karbassian, the
board chairman of the Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and
Renovation Organization
said Iran is currently negotiating with POSCO – which
is among the world’s top
five steel producers – over
this and specifically wants it
to bring an advanced steelmaking technology named
as Finex into Iran.
centrifuges before the sanctions, we have now 25,000
centrifuges and that is the net
outcome of sanctions,” he
said.
“Sanctions have to go if
there is going to be an agreement,” he noted.
Zarif also said that he and
his negotiating team have
been engaged in extensive
negotiations over the past
few days in Munich.
Talking in an open discus-
Holiday Notice
Due to a public holiday in Iran, the next issue of
Ettela'at International will be published on Thursday,
February 12, 2015.
Establishing peace tops Iran's
foreign policy agenda
TEHRAN – President Hassan Rohani
said Sunday that establishing peace and
international understanding, as well as
endeavors to fight arbitrary sanctions on
Iran tops the Islamic Republic's foreign
policy agenda.
The president made the remarks in a
meeting with Iran's newly-appointed ambassador to the United Nations Gholamali
Khoshrou which took place before the departure of the Iranian envoy for New York,
IRNA reported. Rohani underlined the
need for further interaction with the outside world, calling for collective efforts to
fight extremism and violence.
Khoshrou has previously served as the
chancellor of Foreign Ministry's School
of Foreign Relations. He also used to be
Iran's deputy UN envoy and has served
as the head of the Foreign Ministry's
Department of Legal and International
Affairs.
IAEA director general:
Iran, P5+1 determined to reach deal
TEHRAN - Director
General of the International
Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) Yukiya Amano says
Iran and the P5+1 group have
the necessary political determination to strike a final deal
over Tehran’s nuclear program.
"We sense there is a political will. They have covered
various issues and they have
disagreement in some areas
as I understand it," Amono
said in an interview with
The Wall Street Journal on
Sunday, adding, "So all the
elements are there," Press
TV reported.
He further said the talks
between Iran and the IAEA
have yielded no “significant”
progress in recent months,
calling on the parties involved in the nuclear negotiations to do more to clarify
the outstanding issues and
secure a lasting accord.
The IAEA chief also commented on his Saturday
meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif on the sidelines
of the Munich Security Conference in Germany, saying
the two sides agreed to step
up senior-level dialogue.
Zarif did agree that senior
Iranian and IAEA officials
should “interact more intensively and more frequently,” answered all the questions
according to Amano.
raised by the IAEA over
He said that the UN atomic Tehran’s nuclear program,
agency and Tehran are ex- adding that the agency has
pected to hold another top- "almost accepted all the anlevel meeting in the coming
swers."
weeks, although no date has
The IAEA has on numerbeen set yet.
ous occasions confirmed that
Last month, Head of the Iran has lived up to its comAtomic Energy Organization
mitments under an interim
of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar nuclear deal it signed with six
Salehi said the country had world powers last year.
Russian President:
P5+1 must avoid unilateral benefits
TEHRAN - Iran has launched the world’s
largest floating oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf waters.
The 2.2-million-barrel floating oil storage
unit (FSU), dubbed the Persian Gulf, came on
stream in Soroush oil region on Sunday.
The FSU has the capacity to take in some
200,000 barrels per day of heavy crude oil produced in Iran’s offshore oil fields of Soroush
and Nowruz, Press TV reported.
The floating terminal has a length of 337
meters, a width of 60 meters and a height of
33 meters.
The launch of the FSU will significantly
increase Iran’s capacity for crude oil storage
and exports.
Iran’s total in-place oil reserves have been
estimated at more than 560 billion barrels,
with about 140 billion barrels of recoverable
oil. Heavy and extra-heavy varieties of crude
oil account for roughly 70-100 billion barrels
of the total reserves.
Iranian automaker boosts
production by 70 percent
TEHRAN - President of
Iran's largest carmaker, IranKhodro Company, Hashem
Yekehzare said his company's production rose by 70
percent this Iranian calendar
year (which started on March
21, 2014).
Yekehzare also said that
the country’s local carmakers are producing 2500 cars
on a daily.
Meanwhile, Yekehzare
said 54 percent of Iranian
car market belongs to the
IKCO since late August,
adding that IKCO plans to
manufacture new products
to meet the country’s needs
and expand exports, FNA
Iran ready to train Iraqi army
Al-Obeidi paid a visit to
Tehran on December 29 and
called for more support from
Iran for Iraq's armed forces,
saying cooperation between
the two forces is a strategic
need.
Minister of Defense
Brigadier General Hossein
Dehghan told his Iraqi counterpart that supporting Iraq's
armed forces is part of Iran's
defense and security strate-
conference and to hold meetings with his counterparts
from the P5+1 countries – the
United States, the UK, Germany, France, Russia, and
China. He has held numerous
meetings with delegations
from the countries except for
China, which sent no delegation to the conference.
He said that the Munich
Security Conference was a
good venue that provided
the Iranian delegation with
the opportunity to engage
in sideline negotiations with
other groups.
Zarif also commented on
the rising threat of Takfiri
terrorist groups in the Middle East and other parts of
the world. He regretted that
some countries have been
cooperating with them to further their policy objectives.
“The sooner the international community and particularly our friends in the region come to realize that they
cannot even reap short-time
benefits from the existence
and cooperation with these
Takfiri groups, the sooner we
can reach a methodology of
how to deal with them,” Zarif
said.
Iran launches largest floating
oil terminal
Commander:
TEHRAN – Commander
of the elite Army Command
and General Staff College
(DAFOOS) Brigadier General Hossein Valivand said
the academy is ready to train
Iraqi army officers.
Speaking to IRNA, the
general said the issue of
training Iraqi officers was
discussed in a recent visit to
Tehran by Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi.
sion session on the sidelines
of Munich Security Conference, Zarif said that all countries of the region should play
an active role in resolving
regional problems because
these problems will remain
unresolved without their
meddling.
Zarif said such opportunities should be seized because
they will never be repeated.
Some of the problems are
global and are not merely
limited to the region, he said.
Countries in the region
should be involved in talks
but Iran as a country directly
engaged in regional problems has been crossed out of
regional talks, he said.
Iran believes that countries
such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Iran should
be involved in the ongoing
talks about Iraq and Syria
but unfortunately Iran has
been barred from such talks,
he said. In fact, such negotiations will never bear fruits
as continued conflicts will
threaten regional and global
peace, Zarif said.
The Iranian foreign minister has been in Munich to
attend an annual security
President Rohani:
gies.
To a question if Iranian
army has a program to train
Iraq's Kurdistan peshmergas,
Valivand said DAFOOS is
an elite military academy
and is ready to cooperate
with armed forces of friendly
countries.
'When our Defense Ministry signs a security defense
contract with a country, then
we can train officers of that
country or send staff for training,' said the general, adding
that officers from Oman,
Pakistan, and Syria are currently being trained in Iran.
He said Iranian officers
also take training courses in
China, Pakistan, and Oman.
reported.
"IKCO’s current products
are made on four platforms,
and IKCO plans to manufacture cars based on two new
platforms by 2022."
Meantime, a deputy head
of IKCO said in November
that the company had exported 1400 sets of cars over
the first 7 months of the Iranian calendar year (March
21-October 22), showing a
hundred percent of growth
compared to similar period
last year.
"IKCO's exports show
that it exported 1400 cars
over last seven months,"
Deputy Head of Exports
and International Affairs of
the IKCO Ali Elmi said in
November.
He said Iran sold only 600
cars over similar period last
year, adding that Iraq, Venezuela and Azerbaijan are traditional destination markets
for Iranian cars.
Russian market would
be opened for Iranian cars
by 2015, he said, adding the
IKCO is trying to find a good
share in the market of Commonwealth of Nations.
Elmi said Iran is pursuing
export of 200 cars to Azerbaijan and 100 ones to Iraq.
Moreover, 308 cars are moving to Venezuela.
Iran’s positive trade
balance with Italy
TEHRAN – Chairman of Iran-Italy Joint Chamber of Commerce said Italy is the only European country with which Iran
has a positive trade balance, putting the volume of bilateral
trade at about $1.2 billion, including $800 million of Iranian
exports and $400 million of Italian exports.
Ahmad Pourfallah further remarked that in textiles, shoes
and parent industries the Italians are good customers, adding
that previously economic policies of the country were based on
oil but now with the drop in oil prices further attention should
be paid to tourism industry as the Italians are fully acquainted
with it and can help Iran, IRNA reported.
He underlined the role of commercial attaches in foreign countries for the development of transactions and noted that the government selects commercial attaches and introduces them to joint
chambers.However, he added, in a meeting with the head of Trade
Development Organization it was decided that requirements of
the target country such as Italy be announced and on this basis
Iran’s commercial attaché in Rome has good connections with the
chamber of commerce.As for the Milan Expo which is due to be
held in June, Pourfllah said although the expos are mainly run by
governments, coordination has been made for Iran to have a stronger presence in the Milan Expo.
TEHRAN - Russian President Vladimir Putin says
world powers should avoid
seeking unilateral benefits
in the final stages of their negotiations with Iran over the
country’s nuclear program;
otherwise they may fail to
reach a just resolution.
“The crucial point is that
nobody should try to derive
unilateral benefit from the
situation or to bargain out
more than what is needed
for a balanced and just resolution of this complicated
issue,” Putin said in an interview with Egyptian Al-Ahram newspaper on Sunday,
Press TV reported.
Putin also said that the two
sides have yet to find a final
solution to the case despite
the fact that they have made
considerable progress in the
talks over the past months.
"Substantial
progress
has been made [in the P5+1
talks with Iran]. However,
we have not managed yet to
produce a final comprehensive solution either regarding the Iranian nuclear program itself or the prospects
of lifting the sanctions,"
Putin said.
He said, however, that
Russia expects efforts in
this field to continue for
reaching a final deal.
The top Russian official
also defended Iran’s right to
have a peaceful nuclear program, saying that Moscow
believes Iran can enrich uranium under the supervision
of the IAEA.
Since an interim deal was
agreed in Geneva in November 2013, Iran and the
P5+1 countries – the United States, the UK, China,
France, Russia, and Germany -- have missed two
self-imposed deadlines to
ink a final agreement. The
negotiating sides now seek
to reach a high-level political agreement by April 1
and to confirm the full technical details of the accord by
July 1.
The scale of Iran’s uranium enrichment and the
timetable for the lifting of
anti-Iran sanctions are seen
as major sticking points in
the talks.
Iran has so far suspended
some of its nuclear enrichment program in return for
certain sanctions relief.
Iran to up diesel fuel exports
TEHRAN - An Iranian
Petroleum Ministry official
says Iran will start exporting
diesel fuel to international
target markets in March.
“As necessary plans have
beenimplementedtoincrease
diesel fuel production in the
refineries across the country
and also required marketing
activities have been carried
out in this regard, exports
of diesel fuel from Iran to
international markets will
increase in March,” Shana
NewsAgency quoted Deputy
Iranian Petroleum Minister
Abbas Kazemi as saying.
The plan will become
operational in the next Iranian calendar year (starting
March 21), he added.
A surplus of 20 million liters of diesel fuel is expected
next year, given the increased
production, said Kazemi,
adding that diesel supplies
will be exported to Iraq and
Afghanistan
Earlier this month, Iran’s
Minister of Petroleum Bijan Namdar Zangeneh announced that the country will
no longer import gasoline
next year (after March 21).
Zangeneh said Iran will
turn into an exporter of gasoline and diesel when the
Persian Gulf Star Refinery
becomes operational.
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