Underlining "close civlizational and economic ties" between the two countries, India's National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan Sunday asked Western powers to show respect for Iran and its great influence in the region.
The Indian official also asked the West not to exclude India in the search for a negotiated solution of the Iran-West nuclear standoff.
22 April 2008: FNA
TEHRAN (FNA)- Gas may take a while to flow between Iran and India through a tri-nation pipeline, but there is no stopping music and ideas that will mingle at a festival in New Delhi next week, almost coinciding with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first visit to the country.
Haunting strains of Iranian folk music from Lurestan province and Sistan and Baluchestan province and the mellow cadences of Persian poetry will fuse with scholarly debates on the centuries-old ties between India and Iran at the weeklong cultural festival that begins April 30.
Iranian Vice-President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei will kick off the festival in the presence of senior Iranian officials and Iranian ambassador to India Seyed Mahdi Nabizadeh, an official of the Iranian embassy told IANS.
The festival will bring together legendary Iranian musicians, dancers, poets, scholars and craftsmen in a celebration of Persian culture and underscore cultural affinities with another ancient civilization, India, which is home to the world's second largest Shiite population after Iran.
Photograph exhibitions, handicraft, folk dresses, books and replicas will showcase Persian culture in all its myriad hues.
The civilizational connect between India and Iran spanning nearly 3,000 years will be evident at a conference where leading intellectual and cultural figures of both countries will share notes on deepening cultural ties in the 21st century, the official said.
"India's relations with Iran are deep and multi-faceted and go back centuries. The festival will bring out this sense of connection," the Iranian official said.
The festival, which also goes to Mumbai, will culminate in an Iranian Night at the Iran Cultural House that promises to be a veritable artistic treat for the senses.
The cultural festival, which nearly coincides with the first visit of the Iranian president to India, will act as a much-needed balm in relations between the two countries that showed signs of drifting after New Delhi twice voted against Tehran's nuclear program over the last three years.
Ahmadinejad's visit, which will be only for a few hours April 29, will be closely watched in Washington that has tried to persuade India to use its equations with Tehran to prevent it from pursuing its nuclear rights.
India's vote against the Iranian nuclear program at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), first in 2005 and again in 2006, had created some strain in ties, but New Delhi never failed to reiterate its commitment to strengthening relations with Iran.
India has repeatedly supported Iran's right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy under international rules.
Underlining "close civlizational and economic ties" between the two countries, India's National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan Sunday asked Western powers to show respect for Iran and its great influence in the region.
The Indian official also asked the West not to exclude India in the search for a negotiated solution of the Iran-West nuclear standoff.
"We have capabilities and capacities. We believe that we understand better," Narayanan said at an international seminar that was also attended by former US ambassador to India Robert Blackwill.
"Iran is a big country and you need to deal with them diplomatically and with erudition," he said. Being a neighbor with a large Shiite population, "any mishandling", Narayanan stressed, will impact negatively on India.
India had also said on Saturday that military action or sanctions against Iran would exacerbate the situation and that it favored a solution which involves Tehran.
"Sanctions or military action - none of them is a lasting solution and will only exacerbate the situation. We need to evolve something that involves Iran," Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said in an interactive session at the India Global Forum in New Delhi.
Menon said India has made its stand quite clear that while Iran may have the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy it also has an obligation to various international commitments it undertook.
"Ultimately it is an issue of whether or not it is implementing the obligations it undertook. It depends on technical assessments which are best done by the IAEA," he said.
Stressing on the need to change the world looks at non-proliferation, Menon favored new international consensus on the issue.
"We need to have in place a system to which Iran is a party," he said adding sanctions and military action will only "exacerbate" the situation.
The United States and its Western allies have accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative document to substantiate their allegations. Iran has denied the charges and insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
Following heavy and continued pressures by the United States, the UN Security Council imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iran for refusing the Council's demand to give up its right of uranium enrichment, a process needed for producing fuel for Iran's under-construction power plants.
The US is at loggerheads with Iran over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran's nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for other third-world countries. Washington has laid much pressure on Iran to make it give up the most sensitive and advanced part of the technology, which is uranium enrichment, a process used for producing nuclear fuel for power plants.
Iran says it will only negotiate with the UN nuclear watchdog.
Washington's push for additional UN penalties contradicted the recent report by 16 US intelligence bodies that endorsed the civilian nature of Iran's programs. Following the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and similar reports by the IAEA head - one in November and the other one in February - which praised Iran's truthfulness about key aspects of its past nuclear activities and announced settlement of outstanding issues with Tehran, any effort to impose further sanctions on Iran seemed to be completely irrational.
The February report by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, praised Iran's cooperation in clearing up all of the past questions over its nuclear program, vindicating Iran's nuclear program and leaving no justification for any new UN sanctions.
Tehran says it never worked on atomic weapons and wants to enrich uranium merely for civilian purposes, including generation of electricity, a claim substantiated by the NIE and IAEA reports.
Iran has insisted it would continue enriching uranium because it needs to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it is building in the southwestern town of Darkhoveyn as well as its first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr.
Meantime, the IAEA affirmed it has adequate knowledge of Iran's nuclear program, despite allegations that Tehran engages in clandestine activities.
The UN nuclear watchdog is well informed on the current situation in Iran, International Atomic Energy Agency Chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in Berlin on Thursday.
ElBaradei noted that Iran has only 3,000 to 3,400 installed centrifuges, stressing the need to continue dialogue to resolve Tehran's nuclear standoff with the West.
The Islamic Republic insists that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is entitled to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
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