India can be expected to resume energy and economic dialogue with Iran in the first week of July when Shamseddin Hosseini, the Iranian finance minister, leads a delegation here for the 16th meeting of the bilateral joint commission. On the Indian side, external affairs minister S.M. Krishna would co-chair the meeting.
Mr Krishna had conveyed New Delhi’s interest in hosting the joint commission to Manouchehr Mottaki, the Bengaluru-educated foreign minister of Iran, when they met in Tehran in the third week of May.
Mr Krishna had travelled to the Persian Gulf nation for the G-15 summit, on the margins of which he and Mr Mottaki discussed ways to enhance ties, particularly in trade. He called on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and met with Iranian Parliament’s Speaker Ali Larijani.
The India-Iran joint commission meeting would take place a week ahead of Mr Krishna’s visit to Islamabad for the meeting with his Pakistan counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi.
The joint commission focuses on various economic sectors such as transport and energy. It last met at Tehran in 2008.
Mr Krishna’s visit to Tehran was in a series of recent interactions which India has had with Iran, starting with foreign secretary Nirupama Rao’s visit there in February this year for the seventh round of foreign office consultations, and deputy national security adviser Alok Prasad’s talks with Iran’s supreme national security council secretary Saeed Jalili in Tehran in early May.
Iran has assumed a significance of its own in India’s strategic calculus, particularly in the context of the unfolding situation in Afghanistan.