Date:17/10/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/10/17/stories/2008101755671500.htm

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Ambitious policies of the U.S. to be blamed: Iran

Sandeep Dikshit

ASTANA: Iran on Thursday blamed the “ambitious policies” of the U.S. as the main cause for the global financial meltdown and wanted to know why the world should suffer for the follies of one nation. “The financial crises should be considered serious and world-wide due to debt accumulation by a superpower. Unfortunately, we should pay for this despite warnings for the past decade,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki observed at the 31-nation Asian Cooperation Dialogue conference here. Mr. Mottaki’s observation comes a day after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva blamed a handful of rich countries and irresponsible speculators for the financial crises by turning the world into a “gigantic casino.”

Multipolar world system

In alliance with other countries, Iran would focus on ways and means of resolving the problem and one of the most efficient solutions would be to have a justice oriented international relations system that could limit the existing networks of power. The financial crises in the long term could only be resolved by moving to a multipolar world system. “That would be a more reliable path to save the world from such crises in future. In such a situation, the Asian Cooperation Dialogue would become increasingly important due to its objectives of integration and regional cooperation,” Mr. Mottaki said.

Lauding the ACD for playing a “reasonable role,” the Iranian Minister warned of a long road ahead to achieving “coherent, purposeful and regional cooperation.” Pointing to the example of the consensus between three contenders to host the 2010 ACD conference, he said this revealed that consensus was in the nature of Asians. Till Wednesday, Kuwait, Tajikistan and Iran wanted to host the Ninth ACD meet. But a meeting of the member countries saw Kuwait and Tajikistan withdrawing their bid in favour of Iran. Iran and India, he assured, will “put into life” the ACD’s resolve to develop cultural cooperation among member countries. While Iran is the prime mover of the ACD cultural cooperation project, India is the co-prime mover.