IRAN RUSSIA TO INK MILITARY PURCHASE AND AGREEMENT
MOSCOW First of October (IPS) Iranian Defence Minister Rear-Admiral Ali Shamkhani arrived in Moscow on Monday to negotiate new weapons deals which are believed to be worth about 300 million dollars a year.
Before his departure, Shamkhani told a press conference in Tehran that during his visit, he would discuss bilateral military issues including signing arms deals, developments in the Caspian Sea as well as possible U.S. military strikes against Afghanistan.
"We will sign deals to revive the military contracts that had previously been suspended. Our defence co-operation with Russia is within the framework of international conventions", he said.
The arms purchase "framework" was agreed last March during President Mohammad Khatami’s official visit to Moscow.
Russian military experts put the total sale at an estimated US Dollars seven billions.
The agreement infuriated Washington and Tel-Aviv, but both Moscow and Tehran says the arms are of defensive types.
Russia is also building Iran’s first nuclear-powered electricity plant in the Persian Gulf port of Bushehr, worth a billion US Dollars, but the work is behind schedule for technical and financial problems.
As the United States and Israel accuses Iran of being keen to develop a nuclear capability, Tehran and Moscow insist their co-operation in this field is of a strictly civilian nature and the construction is regularly monitored by the Viena-based International Agency for Nuclear energy.
"Iran-Russia defence and security co-operation is within the framework of the international agreements and pose no threat to other states", Mr. Shamkhani assured.
He was originally due to Moscow in early September, but he postponed the trip as it overlapped with the official visit by Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, arriving at exactly the same time.
Iran is against the existence of the Jewish State and supports actively Palestinian, Leabanese and other Arab groups that fight Israel.
Iran sees the warming of ties with Russia as a means of undermining the grip of unilateral U.S. sanctions on its economy.
Moscow and Tehran also share common security concerns. Both Russia and mainly Shi'ite Muslim Iran are wary of radical Sunni Islamic movements in Afghanistan and Central Asia, the official Iranian news agency IRNA noted in dispatch from the Russian capital.
Cash hungry Russia annulled last year unilaterally an agreement reached in 1955 between the then US Vice president Al Gore and the then Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin aimed at stopping all arms sales to Iran for a period of five years.
"Russia provides Iran with any defensive weapons it needs to protect its security. Russia would implement all contracts it has signed with Iran", said the Head of Duma’s Commission for the Defence Affairs Andrey Nikolayev, expressing pleasure over the pace of progress in the Iran-Russia bilateral relations.
"Iran and Russia are two regional powers which play a key role in guaranteeing the peace and security in the region", he added, noting that the two states enjoy common position in connection with the Central Asia and Caucasian.
"In that respect, the visit to Moscow by Iranian Defence minister is of paramount importance and it would be performed in a fully friendly atmosphere", Nikolayev was quoted by IRNA as having said.
He praised Iran for the position it had taken as for the Chechen issue and said the strengthening of Iran's security and defensive capabilities would guarantee Russia's security in the region.
But informed Russian and Iranian sources and experts said Iran’s needs in modern arms concerns mostly at modernising its Air Force and Navy, the country being self-sufficient in land-based arms, including rockets and missiles.
During Mr. Khatami’s visit, the Iranian side confirmed its great interest in the large-scale replacement of its ageing weapons, mostly US-made and bought before the Islamic revolution of 1979, when Iran had almost free access to American military arsenal.
But as a result of the Iran-Iraq War and the embargo imposed on arms sales to Iran by both the United States and other Western major arms producers, the Iranian ayatollahs had no other choice but to turn to Soviet bloc arms, buying mostly outdated North Korean, Chinese and Soviet-made weapons.
The first major arms purchase from the then Soviet Union, worth between seven to ten billions US Dollars was signed by Iran’s former president, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.
Among the weapons Iran is interested on buying from Russia are the S-300PMU-1 and S-300PMU-2 Favorit missile systems needed for protection of the Bushehr’s 1000 Megawatt nuclear powered electricity plant and other strategic facilities drew the particular attention of the Iranian side here, according to "Izvestiya" of Saturday.
In addition, modernisation of the MiG-29 and Su-27 aircrafts and the delivery of missile, landing and patrol craft would also be discussed, the paper said, adding that a contract worth 100m dollars for the delivery of 550 BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles has already been prepared for signing.
Moscow has also sold Iran three Kilo class, Diesel powered submarines, making Iran the first nation in the strategic, oil-rich region of the Persian Gulf possessing such weapon.
The situation in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the devastating suicide operations in New York and in Washington and the possible attack on this war-shattered central Asian nation is also a topic Mr. Shamkhani and his Russian counterparts would discuss.
Both neighbours have condemned the terrorist operations but insist that all efforts aimed at uprooting international terrorism must be under the auspices of the United Nation and not led by America.
"Iran's position on this issue is the same as what was clearly expressed by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khameneh’i and other authorities of Iran's Islamic system", Mr. Shamkhani told reporters in Tehran.
"Iran would never allow the United States to attack Afghanistan using Iranian airspace", Admiral Shamkhani said in answer to questions as whether Iran would allow American planes to cross Iran’s sky to bomb neighbouring, Muslim Afghanistan.
In response to another question on what Iran would do if the United States use Iranian airspace without permission, he said in such case Iran would defend its territory and airspace.
Observers said Mr. Shamkhani’s laconic answer to this questions means that Iran would not oppose limited use of its airspace by American and allied jets, as it did during the US-led war on Iraq in 1990, at which Tehran had observed neutrality.
Iran does not recognise the Pakistani-backed and supported Islamic Emarat of Afghanistan, better know as Taleban, and would be glad to see it toppled, but at the same time it fears the installation of a pro-American regime in Kabol.
Commenting on the consequences of the U.S. eventual attacks on Afghanistan, Mr. Shamkhani said attacks by the United States against Afghanistan would undermine the peace and stability in the region, cause the floods of Afghan refugees seeking shelter in Iran and jeopardize the regional security.
"Iran tries to alleviate the negative effects of such situation in the region", he said, adding however that Iran will continue to support Afghanistan's anti-Taleban Northern Alliance and to arm its fighters.
"We continue to support the Northern Alliance as in the past", Mr. Shamkhani told reporters, and answered, "yes" if that meant supplying arms to the opposition movement.
Alongside Russia, Iran is a main supplier of arms, logistics and finances to the Northern Alliance forces.
Measures to prevent the Caspian Sea from being a militarised region and the extension of NATO in the this oil-rich region are among other major issues to be debated between Iranian delegation and Russian authorities, the Iranian minister said.
Among the five Caspian Sea bordering nations, Iran is the only one that insists on an equal sharing of the lake, the largest in the world, as the four others, namely Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have all divided it between themselves according to each one’s length of the shores. ENDS IRAN RUSSIA MILITARY 11001