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Lawmaker Urges Dialogue to Remove Tajik Misunderstanding

Lawmaker Urges Dialogue to Remove Tajik Misunderstanding
Lawmaker Urges Dialogue to Remove Tajik Misunderstanding

Tehran and Dushanbe should engage in dialogue to address a recent spat over the Tajik state TV's allegations of Iran's interference in Tajikistan's civil war in the 1990s, a lawmaker said.

"The recent misunderstandings can be cleared up through diplomatic meetings. The continuation of the current situation would harm mutual interests," Hadi Shoushtari also told ICANA on Monday.

"Iranian-Tajik cooperation is crucial to countering any threat to the national security of Central Asian countries," he said.

"Security threats in the Central Asia can only be dealt with through cooperation and synergy between Iran and Tajikistan."  

In a documentary aired by the television last week, three Tajiks said that following training in Iran, they killed politicians and other prominent figures inside Tajikistan during the 1992-97 war and attacked a Russian military base there.

The Iranian Embassy in Tajikistan dismissed the accusations as an attempt to damage bilateral ties.

"The airing of such biased films ... shows that certain circles do not want to see ... stronger friendship between the two countries," it said in a statement on Thursday. Iran was one of the mediators in the talks that led to a peace deal between the Tajik government and the United Tajik Opposition during Tajikistan's 1992-97 civil war.

"The historical memory of the noble Tajik nation clearly recalls the constructive role of the Islamic Republic of Iran in settling Tajikistan's civil war in the 1990s as one of the major architects of peace in the country that hosted the peace talks between the warring sides," the embassy statement said.

Iran was the first country to recognize Tajikistan's independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991.

But ties between the two nations, both Persian-speaking and predominantly Muslim, have been strained since a leader of a banned Tajik Islamist party attended a conference in Tehran in December 2015, which angered the government in Dushanbe.

President Imomali Rakhmon's government accused the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan of being behind a failed coup attempt in September 2015 and later banned the party, jailing some of its leaders and activists.

 

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