S. Korea Must Pay Debt to Iran: Deputy FM

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister and chief negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani said on Thursday that Seoul must pay its debt to Tehran, rejecting South Korea's resort to the US sanctions as a pretext to delay the payment.

The South Korean government is bound to pay its debts to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Bagheri-Kani said in a meeting with South Korean Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Choi Jong Kun in Vienna on Thursday. He noted that the US unilateral sanctions are not a good reason for South Korea’s refusal to pay its debts to Iran. Bagheri-Kani noted that Seoul has to act immediately to unfreeze Iranian assets.

The South Korean official, for his part, said that his country would make every efforts to pay its debts to Iran.

The Iranian foreign ministry had on Wednesday confirmed the meeting, but stressed that the meeting is not related to talks between Tehran and the world powers. Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that Bagheri-Kani, who is also the deputy foreign minister for political affairs, will meet and hold talks with his South Korean counterpart in Vienna.

Khatibzadeh said that Bagheri-Kani will meet his Korean counterpart in Vienna, Austria. The presence of the South Korean Foreign Ministry official in Vienna is a personal decision and third parties are requested to be present in Vienna because of bilateral and multilateral issues, he added.

Khatibzadeh noted that the request for a meeting with the Iranian delegation has been announced by the South Korean side. Stating that the meetings had nothing to do with the Iran-the G4+1 negotiations, he highlighted that the South Korean officials met and held talks with some of the delegations in Vienna, and such meetings are usually common on the sidelines of these meetings.

South Korea said on Wednesday that it had sent a delegation to Vienna to hold talks with Iran and other countries over how to resolve the issue of frozen Iranian assets held in the Asian country. The South Korean foreign ministry said its vice foreign minister Choi Jong-kun had arrived in Vienna with a delegation to "explore ways to resolve the issue of frozen Iranian assets in Korea" through consultations on the sidelines with Iran and in coordination with the US, France, Germany and Britain.

Iran and the remaining signatories of a 2015 nuclear deal on Monday resumed discussions to remove sanctions on the Islamic Republic and bring the US back to compliance with the agreement. About US$2.7 billion deposited by the Seoul branch of Iran's Bank Mellat is held by the Bank of Korea, while more than US$7 billion worth of Iranian oil money is stuck at the Industrial Bank of Korea and Woori Bank, according to Yonhap news agency. South Korea’s refusal to free them has caused a diplomatic spat.

South Korea was the biggest client of Iranian gas condensate with 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) on top of 100,000 bpd of crude oil, but the country stopped the imports in November 2018 even before the illegal US sanctions imposed on Iran’s oil industry kicked in.

Gas condensate is an ultra light oil which has a wide range of utilization in the petrochemical industry.

Last month, South Korea’s ambassador to Iran said his country has suffered badly from more than three years of US sanctions on the Islamic Republic. - Fars