TEHERAN,
August 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Afghan President Hamid
Karzai stressed the importance Monday, August 12, of ties with
neighboring Iran, the day before his Iranian counterpart Mohammad
Khatami is due to make a landmark visit to Kabul.
“For
us, relations with Iran are vital, and Khatami’s visit will be a
turning point in our relationship,” Kharzai told Iranian state
television on the eve of Khatami’s visit.
“We
appreciate Iran’s aid for the reconstruction of our country, and its
role for peace and stability in the region,” he added.
Khatami
heads to Kabul Tuesday, August 13, in a bid to cement ties with a
government which it backed when it opposed the Taliban, but whose
close ties with Washington have aroused growing suspicion here, Agency
France-Press (AFP) reported.
Khatami
will be accompanied by a high-ranking political, economic and cultural
delegation for the visit, the first by an Iranian head of state since
the Taliban’s overthrow in November 2002.
An
Iranian government spokesman said Sunday, August 11, the talks between
Khatami and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, would focus on
security issues and the illegal drug trade along the nations’ shared
900-kilometer (560-mile) border.
However,
the schedule for Khatami’s lightning 24-hour trip has been kept
under tight wraps amid continuing security fears in the Afghan
capital.
The
Iranian president’s visit was itself delayed by several months as it
had originally been expected to take place before the convening of the
Afghan loya jirga, or traditional grand assembly, in June to elect a
new 18-month transitional government.
Afghanistan’s
Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah moved Sunday to assure Iran about
the scores of U.S. troops in Afghanistan on the hunt for Al-Qaeda.
For
its part, Tehran, which even tacitly collaborated with Washington in
last fall’s defeat of the Taliban, has sought to set aside its
misgivings over the continuing U.S. presence in a bid to reap the
rewards of its long financial and military assistance to the war
against the Taliban.
Iran
has also been increasingly disappointed at the slow pace with which
the millions of refugees who fled the violence in Afghanistan before
the Taliban’s overthrow have returned to their homes.
So
far only some 120,000 have been repatriated under a voluntary program
in cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Even
the UNHCR accepts that another 1.5 million remain in Iran, and the
authorities here put the figure still higher, at some 2.3 million.
The
burden of the refugees has sparked mounting frustration here and
accusations from the UNHCR that the authorities are resorting to
forcible deportations.
Last
month the U.N. agency expressed concern that more than 16,000 Afghans
had been deported since March, an accusation strongly denied by Tehran
