Afghan Diplomat Calls for Closer Cultural Interaction with Iran
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Appreciating Iran’s granting of citizenship right to Afghan elites and provision of higher education facilities for Afghans residing in Iran last week, a top Afghan diplomat on Wednesday asked for closer cultural interactions as a more important need.
“Granting citizenship rights to immigrant Afghan elites was a very effective move in bilateral cultural relations, but I believe more than being concerned about changing the documents and the ID cards and granting rights to Afghan immigrants, we should try to boost cultural interactions and raise public awareness about our common culture and heritage," said Asadollah Amiri, cultural attache of Afghanistan embassy in Tehran.
“While the two nations have very broad interactions with each other, unfortunately the two nations’ level of knowledge and understanding from one another is not deep, and in some cases, is even very superficial,” lamented Amiri.
The Iranian president on October 30 expressed Tehran’s positive attitude towards providing higher education for Afghan and Iraqi citizens living in Iran.
The president asked a task force set up to oversee the issue to fully explore ways to provide academic study and training for foreigners with a “positive attitude and outlook."
Iran and Afghanistan share several religious, linguistic, and ethnic groups that create cultural overlaps between the two countries.
Iran has hosted Afghan refugees since the late 1970s following the occupation of their country by the Soviet Union troops. Although many of those refugees have returned to their country of their own volition, there are still hundreds of thousands of documented and undocumented Afghans in Iran.
