President Dr. Hassan Rouhani on Monday said India and Iran discussed about sharing of intelligence to check the menace of terrorism, as its tentacles are spreading over Syria, Yemen and many other areas in the region.
With both sides signing 12 major agreements, including the bilateral contract on Chabahar port, Rouhani also asserted that Iran has always attached great importance to their relations with India, which is a major power in the world.
"We have always attached great importance to our relations with India, a major power. The economic relationship between the two countries can become much bigger compared to the past," he said while delivering the joint statement with visiting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The bilateral contract on the Chabahar port envisages development and operation for 10 years of two terminals and five berths with cargo handling [multipurpose and general] capacities.
This is the first foreign port in which India is involved to this extent. The port in the Gulf of Oman on Iran's southern coast with Afghanistan will allow India to bypass Pakistan to transport goods to Afghanistan and central Asia using a sea-land route.
India will help develop the port and invest around USD 200 million to develop terminals and cargo berths at Chabahar. A 500-km railway line between Chabahar and Zahedan will also be built with Indian collaboration.
Situated 72 km west of the Pakistan-China joint venture Gwadar port and on the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the Chabahar Port made its first appearance on the India-Iran bilateral map during the previous NDA regime in 2003.
"Considering that both countries have an important port like Chabahar, we can have vast cooperation. Chabahar port can serve as a point of connectivity between different countries, especially India and Afghanistan, also east of Europe," he added.
Divulging the details about the meeting with Prime Minister Modi, the Iranian President said they have made a decision to bring relations between the academics, universities, technology and scientific parts of both countries closer to each other.
"We discussed about tourism. We are going to put tourism very high on our agenda. We also talked about courses in Hindi, Persian to be held in the two countries," he said.
India and Iran also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for cooperation between the National Archives of India and the National Library and Archives Organisation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which aims to facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge in the field of archival matters through exchange of manuals, guidelines, rules, publications and other special literature on archival topics.
