Pakistan buying electricity from Iran

Pakistan to buy power from Iran

Pakistan will purchase 1,100 MW of electricity from Iran in a bid to overcome the energy shortage in the country, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Sunday

Zeenews,

1 April, 2012

Gilani said this to Iranian Vice President Javad Mohammadizadeh who he met in China's Boao city, Dawn News reported.

The electricity would be supplied from Iran to Pakistan's Balochistan province.

Gilani said Pakistan wants cordial relations with all of its neighbours, and that Islamabad was interested in also buying oil and gas from Iran.

The Prime Minister is in China to participate in the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2012.

The BFA came into being in 1998, formed by a group of Asian leaders. It operates as a non-official non-profit organisation committed to enhancing cooperation between the Asian economies.

Gilani will address the opening session on April 02. He will speak on "Asia in the changing world: Moving towards sound and sustainable development".

He is also scheduled to meet Chinese Executive Vice Premier Li Keqiang, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov.

Uruguay mulls offering Iran rice for oil

Uruguay is considering offering Iran rice shipments in return for oil in apparent disregard of U.S.-led sanctions regarding Iran's disputed nuclear program.

UPI,

26 March, 2012

Uruguayan officials said they expected Iran to consider the offer that would save the Latin American country hard-earned cash from commodity exports.

Analysts said Uruguay's moves would run counter to the sanctions but could also undermine the U.S. dollar, days after a New Delhi summit announced leading emerging markets' pledge to trade in local currencies and shun the dollar.

Rice is part of staple diet for Iran's population of an estimated 74 million and Uruguayan rice is popular in the Middle East country, which bought 90,000 tons of it last year. Uruguay is Latin America's biggest and the world's seventh largest rice exporter and has exported the commodity to Iran for more than three decades.

Uruguayan President Jose Mujica unveiled plans for the proposed barter at the same time as leaders of the BRICS countries -- Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa -- met in New Delhi to agree on ways of trading in their own currencies without recourse to the dollar.

Uruguayan Agriculture Minister Tabare Aguerre called Iran Uruguay's best rice client and hoped a proposed barter would go through.

"If Iran is willing to barter oil for rice we will do it and we will take out currency from (the operation)," Aguerre told news media.

Uruguay hasn't made public any U.S. and European reaction to its intention to defy the sanctions. Several similar commodity exchange deals have seen Iran securing clients for its oil in return for gold and other alternative financial arrangements.

Iran is facing EU sanctions on its oil exports to Europe from July but has pre-empted those curbs by stopping exports and finding other customers. Iran is also reported seeking similar arrangements with traditional Latin American friends Nicaragua and Venezuela and possibly other countries in the region.

It isn't clear how many of the five BRICS nations intend to follow the U.S.-European line on sanctions against Iran. At least three of them -- China, India and Russia -- have ignored the sanctions in various deals with Iran.

The Obama administration wants the sanctions to work toward Iran abandoning its nuclear program before it leads to weapons manufacture. Iran says its nuclear program seeks only peaceful uses in medicine and science and electricity generation.

The result of the sanctions and the dollar's weakness on the world markets has been to prompt China, India and Russia to find ways of circumventing the sanctions against Iran as well as doing without dollar transactions, thus undermining the U.S. currency's role as a globally convertible currency.

Even outside the Iran context, the trend shows how rapidly major emerging markets are moving away from the dollar.

Trading in local currencies will allow the BRICS nations to hedge their foreign exchange reserves against the uncertainties facing both the dollar and the euro. Many countries began hedging last year by purchasing gold. World Gold Council data indicated central banks worldwide bought a net total of 440 tons of gold in 2011, compared to 77 tons in 2010.

iran: 'US can no longer dictate policy'

Iranian leader says U.S. can no longer dictate policy

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday the United States could no longer dictate policy to the rest of the world and warned of growing instability in the West's relations with Pakistan.

Reuters,

26 March, 2012

Ahmadinejad, speaking at a regional conference on Afghanistan, called for the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops from the country and proposed that NATO use part of its military budget to help revive the Afghan economy.

"NATO and the United States should change their policy because the time when they dictate their conditions to the world has passed," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Dushanbe, capital of the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan.

"It's better to respect nations than to scare them and colonize them. The time of imperialism has long gone. Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history will be punished."

The U.S. delegation to the conference, headed by Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake, left the hall when Ahmadinejad began to speak and returned after the conclusion of his speech.

Washington has spearheaded international efforts to isolate Iran, including several rounds of sanctions, over a nuclear program that Tehran says is for peaceful purposes only.

Israel and Western nations say Iran is moving towards a nuclear bomb that could change the regional balance of power. Ahmadinejad made no reference to Iran's nuclear program during his speech.

Speaking in Farsi, translated into Russian for conference participants in the former Soviet republic, Ahmadinejad said NATO policy in Afghanistan and other countries would make Western relations with Pakistan worse.

"Relations between NATO and Pakistan - their unsteadiness and instability will only grow," he said. "The main reason for the difficulties in the world is the policy of NATO member countries, undertaken with the aim of reviving colonialism."

AFGHAN WITHDRAWAL

Ahmadinejad said he believed Afghanistan was capable of running its own affairs, without the presence of foreign troops.

Most NATO combat troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014. President Barack Obama said the massacre of 16 villagers by a U.S. soldier this month had made him more determined to get American troops out.

Calling for the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops, Ahmadinejad said: "The entire problem lies with NATO and with the policies of NATO members, most of all the United States, which entered Afghanistan under the guise of the war on terrorism and under the same banner is now surrounding India, Russia and China."

The Iranian leader said NATO should help fund the revival of the Afghan economy by paying 25 percent of its military expenditure in Afghanistan, or 5 percent of the total military budget of NATO member countries, annually over the next decade.

He said Iran would offer technical and economic assistance to the country, including investment in education, healthcare and infrastructure projects.

A day earlier, he signed a declaration with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon to build a railway line across the three countries and increase supplies of Iranian oil products and natural gas.