National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan said here on Sunday that “India and Iran have civilisational and economic ties.” India’s sizeable Shia population gave a certain vantage point to engage with Iran.
“Iran is a big country and you need to deal with them diplomatically and with erudition.” As a neighbour and with a large Shia population, “any mishandling will impact negatively on us,” he said.
21 April 2008: Hindu
New Delhi: National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan said here on Sunday that “India and Iran have civilisational and economic ties.” India’s sizeable Shia population gave a certain vantage point to engage with Iran.
“Iran is a big country and you need to deal with them diplomatically and with erudition.” As a neighbour and with a large Shia population, “any mishandling will impact negatively on us,” he said.
He was speaking at the IISS-Citi India Global Forum here.According to Iranian diplomatic sources, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his visit to India on April 29 will spend seven hours in New Delhi.
During his visit to Sri Lanka, he will lay the foundation stone for a 100-MW hydropower project to be built with Tehran’s financial assistance. Prior to arriving in Colombo, the Iranian President will visit Islamabad for talks with President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani.
The last time an Iranian head of state visited India was in 2003 when Mohammad Khatami was chief guest at the Republic Day parade that year.
Binary choice
In his address to the IISS-Citi forum, the former U.S. Ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, acknowledged that Iran had the potential to be a divisive issue in Indo-U.S. relations in the second half of 2009 as the next administration moved to mount pressure on Tehran over its nuclear energy programme.
“It is my impression that although India very much wants Iran not to acquire nuclear weapons, if it faces a binary choice of either that or an American military attack on Iran it would choose to try to deal with a nuclear Iran, without the attack,” said Mr. Blackwill. “But [that] is not the view that is now dominant in Washington.”
On Friday, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon criticised the idea that the U.S. and its allies could find a solution to the Iran issue without talking to Tehran.
“Ultimately, you need to have in place a system in which Iran is a party to whatever you agree on her own programme. Otherwise, whatever you do, any of the alternatives or the other options — sanctions, military action — none of them is a lasting solution. In fact, it is only likely to exacerbate the problem,” he said in reply to a question by a French parliamentarian at the IISS forum.
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