IranLatin America

Boroujerdi: Ties with LatAm countries ‘strategic’

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Head of Parliament National Security and Foreign Policy Commission has said Ecuador and Nicaragua are strategically important for the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi who was speaking in a press conference on the outcomes of visits made to Latin America by Ali Larijani, parliament speaker to the region, told that after the Islamic Revolution, relations with Latin America had moved in new directions in the last decade.

Boroujerdi based his judgment of these Latin American countries on the fact that “they opposed in the UN to the resolutions against Iran, or voted for Iran’s interests,” which he believed to be ‘capacity building.’

He also said that Latin American countries had economic and cultural importance for the Islamic Republic of Iran. “Both Ecuador and Nicaragua have taken positions worthy of praise on crimes of the Zionist regime, and they have summoned the regime’s ambassador many times to voice concerns over Israeli crimes; even in an occasion, Nicaragua severed its relations with the Zionist regime for a time,” Boroujerdi argued.
“They have also condemned terrorism in Syria and Iraq, taking revolutionary positions,” said Boroujerdi, complaining that only one cooperation agreement out of 30 such agreements signed had been implemented, namely, agreement addressing cooperation on Red Crescent.

Boroujerdi however admitted that sanctions on Iran’s banking system had impaired money transactions with the international banks; yet he believed that such restrictions should not provide pretext to abandon implementation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s commitments.

He called cabinet ministers to ‘actively cooperate’ to bring the agreements and signed documents with these two countries into implementation phase. “Our national prestige hinges upon these commitments and their implementation,” Boroujerdi asserted.

“During the meeting to Latin America, we met with parliament speakers and foreign ministers of both Nicaragua and Ecuador and discussed parliamentary cooperation,” said he, predicting a visit by Iran’s parliament speaker to these two countries by the end of the current year (ending in March 21, 2015).

“In our last visit, we talked developments in the region especially in Iraq and Syria and Iran’s position about fighting terrorism; both Nicaragua and Ecuador believed that the US was behind the birth of terrorist groups such as ISIL,” Boroujerdi told the press.

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