Zarif says his meetings with Kerry were 'public, pre-announced'

TEHRAN (defapress) – Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said that his meetings with US former Secretary of State John Kerry has been public, pre-scheduled and announced.

News ID: 72485

Date: 18 September 2018 - 15:08

“The visit to New York is a very good opportunity for the country’s diplomacy and is at the highest level of presidency,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, on Tuesday, touching upon the upcoming visit of President Hassan Rouhani to New York for the annual UN General Assembly.

The Iranian diplomatic chief made the remarks on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of an exhibition dedicated to showcasing the role of the foreign ministry in the course of the 8 year war of 1980-88 imposed on Iran by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam.

“Mr. Rouhani will address the General Assembly and will hold bilateral and trilateral meetings on the sidelines of the event which provides a unique opportunity for all countries,” he added.

“If you take a look at this year list of participants you can see that there are 95 heads of states, including presidents and kings, and 38 prime ministers who are in charge of governments of their countries will attend the event which means more than two third of the member states of the UN are attending the event,” recounted Zarif.

“About UN Security Council, it seems from the published articles that the Americans have changed their mind about the first proposed agenda. Because they have found out that if they were to hold such a thing and hold a meeting in the UNSC on Iran, the meeting would turn into a trial session against US while it could have been a session against all internal norms. Because the only UNSC resolution about Iran was the UNSCR2231 and the only violator of it was the US itself and even the US is trying to force the other countries of the world to violate that resolution,” he added.

“As you can see all disputes inside US are because of the opposition of other countries. Our people should be aware that the wild cries of US in these days, all the efforts of US Department of State which is threatening other countries on a daily basis in these days with consequences if they kept their relations with Iran, these are not because US is strong but because they are weak. Because nobody is heeding to American threats and other countries are withstanding the US call for severing ties with Iran,” he continued.

“It is true that some companies have temporarily left Iran but the fact is that these continuous repetition of threats by US is because of problems they have faced in the international community and they had these very same problems for holding an anti-Iran session of UNSC,” Zarif asserted.

“What I read from some papers today was that they have changed the meeting to a limited meeting with a title other than Iran to discuss some other issues,” he said.

“However, the Americans have taken advantage of all chances to utter baseless words and to charge irrelevant accusations against Iran which are rather relevant to Americans and they should be charged with those accusations,” he added.

"My meetings with John Kerry were public and pre-announced, when I go to New York, they all come to visit me from the highest to lowest ranks," Zarif noted, adding "this is a normal thing, and reflects the influence of the Islamic Republic. There is a fake war ongoing there due to election-related objectives.

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