Signing of new Russia-Iran cooperation treaty delayed due to procedural issues on Iranian side - Lavrov

MOSCOW. June 11 (Interfax) - The text of a new Russian-Iranian cooperation treaty has been fully agreed upon but cannot be signed for now because of certain procedural issues on the Iranian side, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

"As for work on a state treaty on cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran, it's true that it can't be signed for now, although the text has been fully agreed upon," Lavrov said at a press conference following a meeting between the foreign ministers of the BRICS countries in Nizhny Novgorod.

"For this treaty to be submitted to the presidents for approval and respectively, for signing, the Islamic Republic of Iran needs to complete a number of procedural legislative steps on matters that are already stipulated in the treaty," he said.

"These steps have not yet been completed," Lavrov said.

He said acting Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani and he have reaffirmed "commitment to this document, which is intended to raise Russian-Iranian relations to a qualitatively new level."

"And we'll manage to do that as soon as our Iranian counterparts settle the chiefly procedural issues that I've mentioned," Lavrov said.