Arcadia Foundation

“Iran and Venezuela are establishing an oil company named Beniroug which allows us to make investments and activities in other countries, including Cuba, Sudan, China and Bolivia,” Venezuelan Embassy’s First Secretary for Energy Affairs Louis Mayta told FNA on Wednesday.

Mayta also reiterated that Spain, which helped to the settlement of problems in the registration of Iran-Venezuela’s joint company, will host its central office.

Referring to Caracas’s investment in the Iranian oil industries, he said a contract was inked during the latest visit by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Tehran on the basis of which, Caracas will invest in Iran’s South Pars oil and gas filed.Mayta also stressed that Iran made several investments in Venezuela’s oil industries, including an investment by Iran’s Petro Pars in the world’s largest oil reserve in the South American country.

The diplomat had earlier on Monday announced that Tehran and Caracas have inked a deal on daily supplies of 20,000 barrels of gasoline to Iran.

Mayta underlined that based on the agreement Iran will repay the equivalent sum in the form of investment in his country’s projects by Iranian companies.

The diplomat further assured that the quality of the gasoline to be supplied to Iran would stand at international levels.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had earlier announced his country’s preparedness to export 20,000 barrels of gasoline to Iran as soon as October.

Zimbabwe’s main professional associations, including the law society and “Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights“, will not attend a conference organized by the ZANU-PF-controlled justice ministry. The withdrawal of the professional groups represents a serious blow to the fragile unity government.

A government-sponsored conference, scheduled to get underway Thursday in Victoria Falls, was to be the first of its kind since the unity government came to power in February. Delegates were to discuss access to justice for all Zimbabweans and the systems through which justice is delivered in Zimbabwe.

But Zimbabwe lawyers’ associations say selective prosecutions, arbitrary arrests, detention of human rights defenders and abuse of the constitution continue unabated in Zimbabwe. They say they will not attend the conference.

The lawyers groups charge the continued abuse of the rule of law indicates state institutions and personnel in the department of justice remain unwilling to seriously address flaws that threaten the breakdown of the justice system. They say this further erodes public confidence in the country justice system.

Georgian opposition politician Zurab Nogaideli and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin, at a meeting in Moscow yesterday, discussed “the current complicated situation in Russian-Georgian relations” and “problems of the Transcaucasian region,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

Earlier, Nogaideli, who is a former Georgian prime minister and today leads a party called Movement for a Just Georgia, advocated Georgian-Russian dialogue without preconditions and the reunification of Abkhazia and South Ossetia with Georgia.

“The unification of Georgia – everything is subjected to this main objective, everything else are mere mechanisms,” Nogaideli told a news conference where he spoke about results of his visit to Moscow.

“There is no military solution to this problem nor can there be any, least of all after the events of last year, and so we must start a dialogue, but not yet a dialogue on status,” he said.

“It is with Abkhazia and South Ossetia and not with Russia that we must hold negotiations on the unification of Georgia. But any negotiations can only produce results if there is no sharp confrontation between Georgia and Russia, and no preliminary conditions must be made for negotiations to start,” Nogaideli said.

“[Georgian President Mikheil] Saakashvili is setting many preliminary conditions for negotiations to start that can not be fulfilled, nor can we really see any desire on the part of Saakashvili to hold a dialogue,” the ex-premier said.

As for contacts between Georgia, on the one hand, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia, on the other, “the first point is to rule out a military conflict and the second point is to restore relations and economic and transportation links between the populations of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, to resume bus and rail traffic,” he said.

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