IRNA reporter in London held a brief interview with Mr. Straw on the sidelines of reopening the Iranian embassy in London:
Q. How excited are you about the reopening of the British Embassy?
A. I am really excited. We need good relations with Iran. Iran is a very important country, its stable in an area where there is great turbulence to the south and to the east and to the west of Iran amongst its neighbours.
Of course there are some issues with Iran as there are with all other countries which we may have relations but the best way to deal with those issues is by close relationship and dialogue.
Q. What previous steps were taken for the reopening of the embassies?
A. There was hopes that the embassy was going to be opened last August 2014.
The minister at the foreign office Tobias Elwood said at the house of commons that he had his plane ticket to go to the opening on 12 August 2014; but that was then paralysed, because there were some final arguments about the return of Iranian non documented people here and questions about diplomatic bags.
There is no doubt that the July agreement of this year made a big difference.
Q. Is this the end of the chaotic diplomatic relations between the two countries?
They were not chaotic before, they were just in deep freeze.
Hopefully this will be a passage to a new era of better relations, as indeed we had from 1999 through to 2005.
Q. How would be the commercial relations?
That is very important. No country has suffered a greater drop in its trade with Iran than UK. Interestingly even as the sanctions led by the Americans against Iran has tightened, American exports to Iran have increased; But the British exports have dropped dramatically; so its also important to have a better trade relations.]
By IRNA
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