Italy Underlines Consultations with Iran over Afghanistan

Fars News Agency

December 2, 2009

TEHRAN (FNA)- The Italian foreign ministry special envoy on Afghan affairs in a meeting with Iranian foreign ministry officials stressed that his country attaches much importance to consultations with Iran over Afghanistan.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the main parties to the Afghan issue and we emphasize the importance and necessity for consultations with Iran," Massimo Yanuci told Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Ahani here in Tehran on Tuesday.

Elsewhere, he referred to an international conference due to be held in Kabul to review Afghanistan's issues, and said the meeting would bear much importance as it would have the country's neighboring states in attendance.

During the meeting, Ahani pointed to the problems that Afghan people are facing, and described the presence of alien forces as the root cause of difficulties intensifying terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking in the country.

He further pointed to the latest meeting on Afghanistan which was held in Tokyo, and said that a large number of states that had promised financial aids to the country could not use their technical and engineering potentials to reconstruct Afghanistan the same way Iran did in the country.