Tajik president departs for Kabul to celebrate Novruz
DUSHANBE. March 26 (Interfax) - Tajik President Emomali Rahmon departed for Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday to attend the 5th international Novruz Festival, the presidential press service reported.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai will play host to the celebrations attended by Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and government delegations from another eleven states, it said.
"Apart from participating in the celebrations, Rahmon will hold a number of bilateral and multilateral meetings with his colleagues to discuss security, deterrence of drug trafficking and economic cooperation," the press service said.
Iran, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan hosted the Novruz Festival in the previous years.
Novruz is a spring equinox holiday broadly celebrated in a number of Persian and Turkic-speaking countries. It originated in the epoch of Zoroastrianism, which worshiped fire, and symbolized the arrival of spring and the beginning of a new life.