Iran free trade pact top EU-India summit agenda
Aiming to bring Iran back to the negotiating table:
India: The European Union looks set to push India at a summit Friday
to use its commercial and diplomatic influence to try to bring Iran back
to the negotiating table over its disputed nuclear programme.
India has a good relationship with Iran, which is the South Asian
nation's second-largest oil supplier after Saudi Arabia, providing 12
percent of India's crude needs at an annual cost of around $12.7
billion.
The energy-hungry country has continued to buy oil from Iran despite
an intensifying US- and EU-led sanction campaign to smother Tehran's
vital oil exports until it abandons its suspected drive to build nuclear
weapons.
In an interview with the Times of India ahead of the one-day EU-India
summit in New Delhi, European Council president Herman Van Rompuy
suggested India's refusal to join the sanctions programme could be
exploited constructively.
“I plan to ask Indian leaders to apply their considerable leverage to
Iran and help in convincing the Iranian leadership to give up their
sensitive nuclear programme and return to the negotiating table,” Van
Rompuy said.
Indian foreign policy experts have previously suggested New Delhi
could act as an interlocutor with Iran to help the world community
engage with the Islamic republic over its nuclear goals, which Tehran
maintains are peaceful.
Defending its decision to continue oil purchases from Tehran, India
argues it is bound only by UN sanctions on Iran, not embargoes imposed
by other countries.
“We can't determine what Indian companies do,” acknowledged EU
ambassador to India Joao Cravinho.
During the summit -- attended by Van Rompuy, EU Commission President
Jose Manuel Barroso and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- the two
sides will also focus on bridging differences holding up a long-delayed
free trade pact.
“We hope to bring a package together that will get the political
blessing from the EU president and Prime Minister Singh,” Cravinho told
AFP.
Such a package would allow negotiators to move into the final lap of
talksfor an accord that could be wrapped up in the second half of 2012,
embracing 1.8 billion people or nearly a quarter of the global
population, Cravinho said.
Intense negotiations have been under way for weeks with both sides
“working on the nature of trade-offs needed to reach a political
agreement”, he added. AFP
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