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What counts more for London at the current stage is to provide help, under the UN supervision, to the Afghan people and not interfere in that country's internal affairs, he said during a meeting with Hadi Khamenei, the head of Iran's special parliamentary commission on Afghanistan.
Britain has been keeping 6,000 of its soldiers on standby to be sent to Afghanistan. However, the plan seems to have been halted amid reports of opposition by the anti-Taliban United Front.
Straw stressed Iran's key role in reconstruction of Afghanistan and creation of its future government. He said London agrees with the Islamic Republic's call for the establishment of a broad-based government in Afghanistan.
The British foreign secretary also recalled Iran's sufferings from the disruption caused by the hardline Taliban and the loss it has incurred in its fierce campaign against international drug trafficking, originating mainly from Afghanistan.
Khamenei said that "the fate of Afghanistan, given its long history of hard ordeals, should be left to the Afghan people's will." Iran, as a neighbor of Afghanistan and due to long standing cultural bonds with that country, gives high importance to developments in the war-torn country, he said.
"In the course of regional developments, the effective role of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Afghan crisis, is not concealed to anybody," Khamenei added.
The Tehran MP also reiterated Iran's call for international fight against terrorism, saying the world should not remain indifferent to the state terrorism of the Israeli government in the occupied Palestinian lands.
Straw arrived in Tehran on Thursday morning to discuss political future of Afghanistan with high ranking Iranian officials, including his counterpart Kamal Kharrazi.
Earlier, Kharrazi and Straw called for the establishment of a broad-based government in Afghanistan with the participation of all ethnic groups.
Straw, here on a one day stay, hoped that a forthcoming UN-sponsored conference on Afghanistan in Germany would lead to "fundamental steps" toward the formation of a coalition government in Afghanistan.
Kharrazi, for his part, said that "the administration of Afghanistan should be put at the hands of its people".
He said a continued presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan will only complicate the existing crisis and will lead to Afghans' opposition.
Straw and Kharrazi last met on November 14 at United Nations headquarters in New York. This is Straw's second trip to Tehran in less than two months.
He came here on September 25 for a one-day visit, the first ever by a British foreign secretary, since the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
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