Iranian traders to visit India as Clinton arrives

‘India is uneasy about joining a US-led drive against the Islamic republic’ :

INDIA: A big Iranian trade mission will arrive in India on Sunday to explore commercial opportunities on the same day as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton starts her official visit, officials said. The six-day Iranian trip comes as Washington has been pressuring India to reduce its oil purchases from Iran in a bid to coax the Islamic republic to abandon its disputed nuclear programme.

“The timing of the visit with Mrs Clinton’s arrival is a coincidence,” Anand Seth, a spokesman for the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), a quasi-government body under the Indian trade ministry, said Saturday. “They’re returning our visit. We invited them when we were there (in Iran),” he told AFP. An 80-member Indian trade mission spent five days in Iran in March.

The 56-member Iranian delegation is set to arrive in India on the same day Clinton lands to spend two days in the energy-hungry South Asian nation, which hopes to win a waiver from tough US sanctions on Iran.

India and China, whose growing economies depend heavily on fuel imports, have publicly opposed US sanctions but at the same time have quietly been diversifying oil sources as a June deadline looms for a US decision on sanctions on importers of the Islamic republic’s oil.

India has pushed state-run refiners to diversify their imports from Iran to win a waiver from sanctions and is aiming to cut shipments from the Persian Gulf nation by 15 to 20 percent.

AFP