DHAKA: Iran wants to improve bilateral relations with the United States and other Western powers, president Hassan Rouhani said in an editorial published in a German newspaper on Monday, broaching an issue he has so far avoided since he took office.

Rouhani won a landslide election victory in June promising a policy of engagement with the West and has had regular diplomatic contacts with the United States, but they have been limited to negotiations over Teheran’s nuclear programme.

‘We want to rebuild and improve our relations to European and North American countries on a basis of mutual respect,’ he wrote in a contribution for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, reports The Straits Times.

‘We are striving to avoid new burdens on relations between Iran and the United States and also to remove the tensions that we have inherited,’ said Rouhani, who has promised to reduce Teheran’s isolation and to win an easing of sanctions.

BDST: 2042 HRS, DEC 23, 2013
Edited by Robab Rosan, Current Affairs Editor