A desire to improve relations

Jack Straw announced Friday that next week he will travel to Tehran and became the first British Foreign Secretary to visit Iran since the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He told a press conference that he had decided to bring forward his planned trip later this year after Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke on the phone with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and his own conversations with Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi. "The president and the government of Iran have been powerful in their opposition to the Taliban," Straw said. "Iran has suffered very badly as a result of the instability and extremism of the Taliban and has had to face a very, very severe refugee problem on its border." President Khatami was very strong in his condemnation of last week's terrorist attacks in the US and that Iran was a country that had also suffered severely from terrorism, Straw said. His visit to Tehran has been included in a trip to the Middle East between September 25 to 27, which was planned as part of a hectic series of global British diplomatic efforts in response to the attacks in New York and Washington. The Foreign Secretary told reporters that there was a great deal to discuss in Tehran and that there was obviously a desire to improve relations with what he said was an extremely important country in the Middle East. Kharrazi subsequently visited London in January 2000 and exchange of ambassadors also took place, but a return British visit was repeatedly delayed.