Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and visiting Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez on Sunday, October 21, vowed to work towards a "stabilization of the oil market prices" following the September 11 anti-US attacks.
"Before traveling to Moscow and after my talks in Saudi Arabia, and now in Tehran with President Khatami, I want to assure you that the (oil) prices will not fall, but that on the contrary, they will remain at their true level," Chavez said at the end of his talks with Khatami.
Chavez, in Tehran on a brief visit for talks on the oil market situation, arrived Sunday from Saudi Arabia, where he and King Fahd agreed on the "importance" of oil price stability. "We are in favor of a collective strategy among OPEC countries, allowing the assurance of the market's stability and better cooperation between producing countries," Chavez told the press without giving any further details on the nature of this strategy.
"The only thing which I would like to tell you is that we have a perfectly common view on the necessity to work in favor of price stability," Chavez said, expressing the hope that prices would "find their balance."
The Venezuelan head of state is lobbying other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to keep up oil prices, possibly through a cut in output. Khatami for his part said producing countries should "reinforce their cooperation in order to assure their interests as well as those of consuming countries."
"We hope to find a mechanism which would allow stabilization of the market thanks to cooperation between producing countries," Khatami said, referring to the next OPEC meeting during which members will try to stabilize oil prices.
The Iranian head of state also raised the issue of the September 11 attacks on the United States and the war against terrorism, implicitly criticizing the US-led military strikes against Afghanistan for sheltering Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the anti-US terror attacks..
"We speak of terrorism and say that there should be a global determination to fight this abject phenomena," he said. "One should attack the roots and not a defenseless and innocent people with an angry spirit," Khatami said, once again expressing support for a greater role of the United Nations in the Afghan crisis.
Since the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Khatami and Chavez had held numerous telephone talks on the oil market situation. OPEC's price per barrel has lingered around $20 for more than three weeks, below the $22 floor of its target band and in theory triggering an automatic 500,000 barrels-per-day cut in output.
The slump in oil prices has been aggravated by looming recession after the terrorist attacks in the United States, which hit the air travel industry, a large oil consumer, particularly hard. Key OPEC ministers met Friday in Vienna to discuss crude prices without taking any official decision on the issue.
Khatami has blamed the slump in crude prices on what he said was an output increase by non-OPEC oil producers. Meanwhile, a high-ranking Iranian oil ministry official said the oil prices "will not be raised before the end of the American attacks against Afghanistan."
"As long as the United States continues its attacks on Afghanistan, the prices will continue to sink unless the US carries out its threats against Iraq," deputy oil minister Hojatollah Qanimifard was quoted as saying by Sunday's press. He said oil prices would "rise if Iraq decides to provisionally cut a part of its exports in case of US attacks against Baghdad." ― (AFP, Tehran)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
