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Tehran, Dec 22, IRNA -- Iran's Foreign Minster Seyed Kamal Kharrazi said here Saturday upon his return from Kabul that Iran is opposed to the idea of presence of foreign forces in the region.
"That has been the Islamic Republic of Iran's established policy during the past decades," said the Iranian foreign minister, and "that is our policy towards Afghanistan today," he reiterated.
He all the same accepting that the presence of a UN security force, as is scheduled according to the UN Bonn Talks on Afghanistan is justifiable and might even be of temporary benefit.
Speaking to a group of media representatives at Tehran's Merabad irport the Iranian top diplomat added that just like the strong role that Iran played in the formation of the interim Afghan government, "we are ready to have a strong an dynamic presence in the course of reconstruction process in that country."
Kharrazi said, "today I am coming back from a country that is mainly devastated, but relying on the two nations' shared language and being well familiar with the geography of Afghanistan, Iran is the most appropriate country for assisting the Afghan nation in restructuring their administrative system, offering necessary consultations to them and dispatching experts and technicians to assist them with the process of reconstruction of Afghanistan.
Further elaborating Iran's official stand on the presence of foreign military forces in Afghanistan, Kharrazi reiterated that Iran has always been opposed to the presence of alien forces in the region, although the multi-national forces in Afghanistan are scheduled to be supervised under the UN command.
"We hope there will be no need, even to the presence of those forces in Afghanistan in near future, and the Afghan nation would be able to safeguard its own internal and external security needless of outsiders," added Kharrazi.
He further stressed that "the Afghan police must be comprised of members from the Afghan nation."
Briefing the audience about his meetings in Kabul, Kharrazi referred to his talks with the head of the newly established interim Afghan government Hamid Karzai, the former president Burhaneddin Rabbani, Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah and heads of a number of Afghan groups.
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