Daily News Online
   

Saturday, 11 February 2012

Home

 | SHARE MARKET  | EXCHANGE RATE  | TRADING  | OTHER PUBLICATIONS   | ARCHIVES | 

dailynews
 ONLINE


OTHER PUBLICATIONS


OTHER LINKS

Marriage Proposals
Classified
Government Gazette

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

 

EMAIL |   PRINTABLE VIEW | FEEDBACK

Executive Residencies - Colombo - Sri Lanka
VAYU Mobile Phones and Accessories Online Store
Kapruka Online Shopping
Donate Now | defence.lk
www.apiwenuwenapi.co.uk
LANKAPUVATH - National News Agency of Sri Lanka
www.army.lk
Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL)
www.news.lk
www.defence.lk

| News | Editorial | Business | Features | Political | Security | Sport | World | Letters | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House Copyright © 2012 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.

Comments and suggestions to : Web Editor