TEHRAN, Dec 15: Iran’s Foreign Minister Dr Kamal Kharrazi in a wide-ranging interview given to a group of visiting Pakistani editors here on Sunday described the forthcoming visit of President Muhammad Khatami to Pakistan as an important event marking the beginning of a new era in relations between the two countries.

He said one of the major goals of the visit will be to finalize mechanisms and instruments to promote trade relations between Iran and Pakistan and to encourage the private sector of the two to invest in each other’s country.

He maintained that cooperation between Pakistan and Iran was essential to face the challenges the two are confronted with. “It is true that unfortunately the true potential of cooperation between the two has not been realized, in terms of trade and business, both of which are very low while I am sure that many items can be exported from Pakistan to Iran and imported from Iran to Pakistan,” he added.

Kharrazi made a special mention of the gas pipeline project and described it as the pipeline of peace. He said setting up of this pipeline would serve the economic interests of all the three countries — Iran, Pakistan and India.

He said at present the three countries were looking at the most economic route to be followed for the transportation of gas from Iran to India through Pakistan and feasibility studies in this regard would be completed in a few months time.

“Although there are still some questions on the security of the pipeline and other matters but I think construction of this pipeline is in the interest of all the countries in the region, that is why I have called the pipeline, the pipeline of peace. We are optimistic that better understanding would soon prevail between India and Pakistan and this project would materialize,” Kharrazi observed.

He said there would be no problems in financing the project as many international companies specializing in this line have shown their willingness to fund it, “the only problem is the crisis which besets India and Pakistan and hopefully it will be resolved soon.”

When asked for his opinion on how the India-Pakistan crisis could be resolved, the Iranian foreign minister said, on its part Iran has been trying to help the two countries to come closer.

“When I visited India last year, I had a good meeting with prime minister Vajpayee and I discussed the matter with him and on my return I stopped over Pakistan and met President Musharraf. It is in the interest of Iran to do something to help both sides to engage with each other and talk to each other,” he added.

He said Iran and other countries of the region were worried about the tension between the two nuclear neighbours and feared that any eruption in the hostility between the two would cause great damage to the entire region.

He said what was important was to change the mindset which exists on both sides. “It is the mindset of animosity and it has to be changed to a mindset of dialogue and understanding. Dialogue has to be promoted and if the two talk I am sure they will find solution to this conflict and ways and means to reduce tensions. Resolution of this conflict is the prerequisite for economic development and prosperity in the region.”

Questioned if Iran would like to play a more active mediatory role in this conflict, Dr Kharrazi said the key was in the hands of Pakistan and India, “what we can do is encourage as we have done so far and we have encouraged both sides to sit together despite having different views and positions on the main issue.”

Answering another question he said, the ouster of Taliban from Afghanistan and President Musharraf’s ‘courageous’ action on this front had removed the main irritant that marred relations between Pakistan and Iran.

“We are glad that President Musharraf had the courage to change the policy and now we both have the same policy towards Afghanistan,” he added.

As a matter of fact, he said, Iran had taken steps to cooperate with Pakistan in Afghanistan. “We had a meeting recently between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan under the auspicious of the UNDP where we agreed to cooperate fully with each other in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.”

When asked about the new role Iran would like to play in the region, Kharrazi said that Iran’s two decade long experience in terms of development of civil society and operating a new model of democracy has prepared it for playing a more active and helpful role in the region.

“I believe what we have done so far, although we have been facing a lot of problems and difficulties from outside in terms of sanctions, in terms of war against Iran, in terms of different challenges that we have faced since the revolution, we have improved our governance and developed a functioning democracy based on the principles of Islam, a concept which has the full support of the entire nation,” he explained.

He said Iran could help the countries in the region with its own model of democracy but hastened to add that each country could adapt the model to suit its own conditions. When asked if Iran felt the need to bring about a change in its world view after 9/11, the Iranian foreign minister said his country had already taken measures to cope with the challenges and changes thrown up by the incident.

“In fact 9/11 is an incident which has brought about a lot of changes everywhere, to international relations, in national policies of individual countries and in relations between different countries,” he added.

“We have been trying to do our best to help the international community on how to fight terrorism and on how the root causes of terrorism could be uprooted,” he maintained.

Of course, he said, from the very beginning Iran had some differences with the US on this issue as according to him the Americans wanted to tackle terrorism with the military muscle while Iran wanted to confront the very root cause of terrorism.

He said one of the major root causes of terrorism was injustice which was being experienced by the Palestinians and as long as this injustice is not removed terrorism would flourish.

When asked why even after having cooperated with the international community so far on terrorism the US was still hostile towards Iran, Kharrazi said it was typical of the American mentality according to which you are either with them or against them.

He said Iran’s nuclear programme was totally peaceful and it was committed to honour all international laws in this regard. “We have nothing to hide.”

He said the international community including the US has appreciated the role played by Iran in the Afghan crisis.