British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is travelling to Iran next week as part of his planned trip to win support from for the US-British war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
"The Foreign Secretary believes that it is vital to bring in as many countries as possible into the discussion about the very difficult challenge of Iraq," a British Foreign Office spokesman said. He told IRNA that Straw also hoped to underline during his three-day trip to the Persian Gulf that the "UN's authority is at stake if they don't take effective action."
Britain's Foreign Secretary is visiting Cairo and Kuwait before arriving in Tehran on Wednesday, where he is expected to meet his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi, IRNA added.
The Foreign Office spokesman said that during his visit to the Gulf region, Straw "wants to ensure those he sees have as much as possible of the information that we and the Americans possess about Iraq's weapons program and aggressive policy."
Straw's trip is his third to Iran in the past 13 months. His visit in September 2001, which just preceded the war in Afghanistan, was the first to be made by a British Foreign Secretary since 1979. The UK government paved the way for the upcoming visit by appointing Richard Dalton as the new British Ambassador to Tehran, ending a ten-month dispute. (Albawaba.com)
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