TEHRAN. Sept 30 (Interfax) - Russia is interested in taking cooperation with Iran to a higher level, Russia Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said.
"Russian-Iranian relations have a centuries-old history and are based on the principles of friendship, good-neighborliness and mutual respect. And Russia is sincerely interested in taking our cooperation to a higher level, in making it more eventful," Mishustin said during talks with Iran's First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref in Tehran on Monday.
Such decisions have been made by the leaders of the two countries, Mishustin said.
"We welcome Iran's principled decision to further strengthen strategic partnership with Russia, and we fully share such commitment," he said.
Russia attaches priority importance to expanding trade-economic cooperation and diversifying mutual trade and its structure and suggests that the work to increase it should continue, he said. "And of course, we believe it is important to create the most favorable conditions for organizing a whole range of large investment projects in various areas," Mishustin said.
Such tasks should be achieved by the joint Russian-Iranian commission on trade-economic cooperation, whose Russian co-chair is Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev, he said.
"We consider logistics and transport infrastructure to be the most promising track. Russia and Iran have big transit potential in the Caspian region and in Eurasia. We are actively developing international corridors: the North-South transport corridor connects Russian ports in the Baltic Sea, in the northern seas, with Iranian ports on the Persian Gulf coast and the Indian Ocean and gives all Eurasian states direct access to the fast-growing markets of the Asia-Pacific region and Africa," Mishustin said.
Moscow also attaches a lot of importance to humanitarian cooperation, Mishustin said. "I know that interest in education in Russian, in particular, in receiving a higher education, has recently been increasing in Iran. The number of Iranian students who are studying at Russian universities tripled over the past four years and reached 8,000 people. We welcome that. There is big potential in the sphere of our tourist exchanges, in particular, a decision that was made on visa-free travel for groups of tourists, made it possible to increase the number of our citizens travelling to Iran by 52%, and Iranian tourists today can get electronic visas for visits to Russia," Mishustin said.
Moscow and Tehran have a lot of projects in transport logistics infrastructure, energy, agriculture, IT, industry, cultural and humanitarian issues, Mishustin said. He suggested discussing this issue.