Business appeals to Dubai to ease Iran trade curbs

Business leaders have appealed to the Dubai government to ease restrictions on trade with Iran imposed after the latest international sanctions on the Islamic republic, media reports said yesterday.

The business leaders, who made the appeal during a Monday meeting with deputy ruler of Dubai Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid al-Maktoum, said curbs on finance and letters of credit made it difficult to trade with Iran even in food and commodities not covered by the June 9 UN sanctions, Gulf News daily said.

They complained of “facing obstacles when importing, exporting and re-exporting with Iran due to restrictions imposed by banks,” the report said.

They urged the government to intervene “to find a clear-cut mechanism to streamline and facilitate funding so as to mitigate losses incurred by the trade sector,” Khaleej Times said, citing the official WAM news agency.

The United Arab Emirates and Iran are close trading partners, though they have a dispute over the ownership of small Gulf islands now controlled by Iran.

Gulf News cited UAE-Iran Chamber of Commerce statistics as indicating trade between the two countries peaked at $12 billion in 2008, then fell to $8 billion the following year.

“The level of trade is expected to come down to six billion dollars this year,” the newspaper said.

The UN Security Council imposed a fourth round of sanctions in June over Iran’s controversial programme of uranium enrichment, which many Western states believe masks a covert bid to make a nuclear bomb, a charge Tehran denies.

The United States and European Union later unilaterally imposed even tougher punitive measures, which contain provisions to penalise Tehran’s trading partners.