Iran’s FM to Visit Lebanon, Eastern Europe


Iran’s FM to Visit Lebanon, Eastern Europe

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will travel to Lebanon on Monday for political talks following the election of a new Lebanese president, a spokesperson announced, saying the top Iranian diplomat will begin a three-nation tour of Eastern Europe afterwards.

Foreign Minister Zarif will leave Tehran for Beirut on Monday evening and stay there until Tuesday, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said at a weekly press conference.

Bilateral ties between Iran and Lebanon and the new circumstances in the Arab country after election of a new president make it necessary for Iranian minister to pay a visit to Lebanon, he added.

According to Qassemi, Zarif will have meetings with Lebanese President Michel Aoun and representatives of various political parties for talks on issues of mutual interest and on the latest regional developments, including the crisis in Syria.

Iran is aware of Lebanon’s influential role in the region and has never ceased consultations with the Arab country, he added.

Lebanon’s parliament elected Aoun as president last week. The Arab nation had been without a head of state for 29 months after Michel Suleiman stepped down as president at the end of his term in May 2014. Since then, 45 sessions to elect a new leader had failed due to political infighting.

Elsewhere in the press conference, Qassemi said Zarif will later begin a tour of Eastern Europe that would take him to Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

“We worked in good cooperation with these (Eastern European) countries in the past in economic, technical and industrial fields,” the spokesman noted, saying a lot of Iranian industries used to employ Czech technologies in the past.

He also said that Iran and the Czech Republic are going to upgrade diplomatic ties to the ambassador level, saying charges d’affaires of the two countries have been proposed for the position of ambassador.

In September 2015, Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek paid an official visit to Iran with a big business delegation and held meetings with top Iranian officials.

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