Iranian President Khatami Arrives in Kabul for Official Visit

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, August 13, 2002

Iranian President Khatami Arrives in Kabul for Official Visit

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami arrived in Kabul Tuesday for a one-day official visit to Afghanistan aimed at boosting bilateral relations.

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Iranian President Mohammad Khatami arrivedin Kabul Tuesday for a one-day official visit to Afghanistan aimed at boosting bilateral relations.

At the welcoming ceremony held in Presidential Palace, where Khatami and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai inspected the protocol army, the Iranian President delivered a brief speech and expressed his congratulations to the Afghan people on their achievements.

"Afghanistan is a great country," he said. "You have resisted foreign occupations and now you can obtain the peace fruits."

"President Karzai and his government have brought about peace and stability to this country, which will have a brighter future,"he added.

Khatami was accompanied on his first visit to Kabul by vice president and foreign, economic and scientific ministers, among others.

The large Iranian delegation is expected to hold talks with President Karzai, Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah and other cabinet members and sign several agreements on economic cooperation between the two countries.

Since the Taliban regime took control of Kabul in 1996, Iran has enjoyed close relations with the former Northern Alliance, which plays a major role in the anti-Taliban war and thus gets a lion's share in power division in the Afghan transitional government. Iran is supposed to play an important role in the economic reconstruction of Afghanistan.

The two neighboring countries signed an agreement last week to work together on a project to replace the poppy cultivation with other legal crops in Afghanistan.

Khatami had originally planned to visit Afghanistan before the convening of the Afghan Loya Jirga in June.

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