KABUL, Afghanistan, May 25 (UPI) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai will visit Iran next week and attempt to mediate Iran's outstanding issues with "other countries."
ZeeNews reported from Kabul on May 23 that Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told journalists in the capital Kabul that Afghanistan's stance on the Iranian nuclear issue is that "Afghanistan wants an Asia free from nuclear weapons. We will emphasize that the problems between Iran and other countries should be solved by negotiations."
Karzai's visit to Iran is scheduled for May 27-28. Among the bilateral issues on the agenda is a railway between Iran and Afghanistan and a prisoner exchange.
Iran's nuclear program is also to be discussed. While Teheran insists that the program is solely for the peaceful generation of electricity, Israel, the United States and European countries suspect the program's real purpose is the covert manufacture of nuclear weapons.
Tension over the issue has risen since Iran announced in April that it had enriched uranium for the first time with 164 centrifuges linked in a cascade.
