President Rouhani and his Kazakh counterpart Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev attended a joint press conference in Saadabad Palace on Monday after the former’s reception of the latter; “I express my gratitude to President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan for visiting Tehran and for his invitation to me to visit Almaty. I welcome him and his delegation in this visit,” said Rouhani as his opening take. “Since the independence of Kazakhstan, Iran had seen improving ties with this Central Asian country with which we have many common cultural and ethnic features.”
“Kazakhstan supported Iran during our nuclear negotiations with world powers; it also hosted two rounds of meetings in Almaty; it participated in JCPOA implementation when it sent 60 tons of yellow cake to Iran,” Rouhani told the press conference.
“A total of 66 MoUs, either in public or private sectors have been signed which clearly indicate a turning point in bilateral relations; upcoming banking cooperation and visa issuance facilities will also provide other effective steps to boost trade,” Rouhani added. “Excellent grounds for cooperation in agriculture, food security, and extraterritorial farming; in all private and public meetings, we discussed trade, cultural and scientific exchanges, and agriculture and had a good level of unanimity that both sides should work to improve relations.”
“We also discussed in transportation sector preliminary measures to connect Inceburun in north of the corridor to Bandar Abbas in the southern extremity; on Caspian Sea cooperation, environmental issues, maritime communications, terrorism, and legal regime of the Caspian Sea provided the meeting with subjects matters of discussion,” Rouhani said. “Both Iran and Afghanistan were unanimous that extremism, sectarian strife, and terrorism are all serious threats to the Islamic world at large; stability in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and a ceasefire in Yemen and political approaches to them were also discussed.”
On upcoming Istanbul Summit of OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation), Rouhani believed that the summit should communicate signals of unity among the members.
Nursultan Nazarbayev for his part briefly addressed the press conference; “a new chapter has been opened in Iran-Kazakhstan relations with removal of sanctions; Kazakhstan has been a close company to Iran and the current signed 66 MoUs are worth $2bn,” he told the press conference, “Islam should be distinguished from terrorism; to fight terrorism, Islamic unity is necessary to help solve problems of the world of Islam. In the same vein, Iran and Saudi Arabia should come to negotiate their problem and settle their differences,” he added.
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