Indian PM may attend NAM summit in Iran

TEHRAN,April 3 (MNA) – Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may visit Iran later this year, the Indian daily newspaper Deccan Herald reported on Sunday. Singh may attend the Non-Aligned Movement’s 16th summit, scheduled to be held at Isfahan, Iran. Singh may meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of the summit. Favoring diplomacy and dialogue to resolve the tension over Iran’s nuclear programs, Singh had joined the BRICS leaders in warning the United States and the rest of the Western world over the “disastrous consequences” of a conflict with Iran over the issue. They also opposed fresh sanctions on Iran, stating that U.S. domestic laws should not lead to volatility in the international price of crude oil and thus slow down growth of developing countries. New Delhi, however, will take a final call on the visit after assessing the situation in West Asia and the progress of Tehran’s talks with the Western powers scheduled to resume at Istanbul on April 13. Singh had attended the 14th and the 15th NAM summits at Havana in Cuba and Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt respectively. This apart, he is yet to honor a pending invitation from Iranian President Ahmadinejad to visit Iran. Singh and Ahmadinejad had a bilateral meeting on the sideline of the 14th NAM summit in 2006. The Iranian president also met Singh during his brief stopover at New Delhi on way to Colombo in 2008. The invitation was renewed when they had last met in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2011. Sources in New Delhi said that India and Iran had agreed to work on PM’s visit to Tehran then.