TEHRAN — “Scientific cooperation with Iran would be valuable to us,” said Claire Tillekaerts, CEO of Flanders Investment and Trade, a Belgian agency promoting sustainable international business.

“Iran has high scientific potentials and has done some thorough research works which are valuable to the world, so we are willing to return to Tehran with representatives of Flanders’ universities in January to develop scientific cooperation,” IRNA news agency quoted Tillekaerts as saying on Wednesday.

She went on to say that Flanders has scientist and academic ties with different parts of the world and is among the leading countries in nanotechnologies and biotechnologies.

“Long-term and close scientific relations with other countries such as Iran are important to us and we try to establish cooperation with Iran in no time,” she noted.

She further explained that they are keen on developing cooperation in other fields of medicine, clean technologies, tourism, and infrastructure.

Iran and Belgium have always enjoyed intimate relations but sanctions had restricted those relations and now is a good time to cultivate those relations once again, Tillekaerts added.

A Belgian trade delegation including 200 representatives from 140 companies arrived in Tehran on October 30 to explore avenues of enhancing mutual economic cooperation with their Iranian counterparts during their two-day stay in Iran.

The delegates are active in various fields such as oil and gas equipment and services, commercial vehicles and auto parts, construction, interior decoration and architecture, flooring and textiles, forwarding and transport, new energies, food industry, information technology and etc.

As announce by Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization Head Mojtaba Khosrotaj announced Iran-Belgium current annual trade of near $200 million is anticipated to double by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2017).

MQ/MG