India turns down Iran president’s visit request
Dated 6/8/2005
Printer Friendly
Subscribe
6 August 2005: India has turned down Iran president Mehmoud Ahmedinjad’s request for a state visit, his first since his election, because of his controversial international posturing, and hard-line anti-West views, and Russia has said no to him before.
But nevertheless, the Iranian president wants close ties with India, banking upon it to bring peace and stability in the Middle East, and he wants to include India, Russia and China with the EU three, the UK, France, and Germany, to negotiate about Iran’s clandestine weaponisation programme.
Diplomats said that he has intimated to India that Iran would move its ground troops close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border by the year-end because of the “war-like” build up of the US military in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but he has added that he is open to a “middle way” in respect of Iran’s weaponisation programme so long it gives dignity to his country.
Ahmedinjad in seeking to include India in the nuclear negotiations with the EU says that European negotiators do not understand the Asian mindset, and they typically take a pause in the Iranian side of negotiations as an assent, which it is not, and, therefore, non-Europeans like the Indians would be closer to gauging the Iranian mindset.