Concurrent with the emergence of new Latin American governments that have distanced themselves from Washington, Iran has been able to establish important regional ties and partnerships, with the objective of improving its international standing and relative power.

Iranian economic cooperation and energy policy within the developing world serve as pillars of its foreign policy strategy. As reported by Pinr.com, to increase its political/economic capital and international standing, Tehran is not only investing in its most vital area of interest (the Middle East) and in its regional geopolitical environment--which encompasses Central Asia and the Caspian Sea region--but is also acting globally, extending its influence well beyond its traditional area of reach through political/economic alliances.
This trend seems to be confirmed by Iran’s current diplomatic, political and economic global partnerships in Asia and Latin America, a powerful tool to consolidate old alliances and gain new partners.

Looking East
On the Asian continent, the Iranian strategic realignment seems to rely on organizational and bilateral cooperation, extending beyond existing relations. On the contrary, Iran aims at reaching out to US allies or “friendly“ countries, such as India and Pakistan, as well as to emerging global powers, especially to China.
First, Iran is investing heavily in existing structures to facilitate continental cooperation and coordination, trying to capitalize on the recent diplomatic and political gains obtained in the Caspian Sea area (where Tehran succeeded in consolidating an embryonic cooperation and security organization with the neighboring littoral states). In the Asian context, this agenda is implemented by pushing for a greater role within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The SCO is a permanent intergovernmental organization created in 2001 and composed of six permanent members (China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and, since 2003, five states with observer status (Iran, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Mongolia).
Iran has been demanding to change its observer status and gain full permanent membership in the organization, as reiterated by First Vice President Parviz Davoudi in the course of the last November 6 meeting of the SCO in Tashkent. On that occasion, he explained Iran’s regional agenda by stating that “the new experience of Caspian Sea summit in Tehran indicated the cooperative morale among regional countries is very high,“ and emphasized that “the SCO can emerge as an effective weight in the international arena and play an effective role in improving the new world order upon interests of the countries of the region.“
Second, besides investing in pre-existing regional organizations, Iran is also increasing its bilateral relations by leveraging its energy resources to create powerful economic incentives to increase state-to-state cooperation. An important example of this trend is the recent finalization on November 10 of an agreement between Pakistan and Iran to proceed with the creation of the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline.
The peace pipeline, a 2,600 kilometer and $7.4 billion project, would bring gas from Iran’s South Pars field to Pakistan and India. The two countries finally reached an agreement when Pakistan consented to Iran’s demands to revise the gas pricing formula every three years and to implement a price-level mechanism tied to Japanese gas market prices.
Despite ongoing US opposition, the two countries are aiming to formalize a multi-billion dollar gas export deal in November, and Pakistan has officially reiterated its determination to import Iranian gas, and to transfer it to India and China.
Furthermore, Pakistan-Iran energy cooperation will also be enhanced by a $60 million, 100 kilometer electric line that will allow Pakistan to import an extra 100 megawatts of electricity from Iran. Consolidating economic ties and increasing the mutual level of interdependence with Pakistan--a regional power and a traditional US ally--has a high strategic value for Iran, which is also trying to achieve a similar agreement with India.
Previously, negotiations with India on the IPI project failed due to both substantial disagreements over pricing formulas and transit fees, and because of continued US pressure on India to abstain from purchasing Iranian gas. India’s reluctance led Pakistan and Iran to agree on a preliminary bilateral agreement without involving India, under the understanding that any excess gas under the bilateral framework would instead be transferred to China.
It seems, however, that the economic potential of the project will override other existing considerations, and that India will indeed begin negotiations to join the IPI project, which would again contribute to consolidating the network of Iran’s economic-development partnerships.
Similarly, Iran is aiming at consolidating energy and cooperation ties with China. In this sense, in September 2007 Iran finalized oil and gas cooperation projects with China--despite ongoing disagreements over price and revenue sharing between the two countries, which has until now prevented Chinese purchase of Iranian liquefied natural gas, and has stalled the development of the Yadavaran oil field by the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec).
Disagreements aside, cooperation with China seems to be a strategic priority for Iran. For example, Iran, together with China and Malaysia, recently agreed on a joint development project of the Iranian Ressalat oil field. Moreover, China and Iran just signed a Memorandum of Understanding to store Iranian oil in Chinese strategic reserves, which would further enhance economic relations and interdependence between the two countries, and which would tie Iranian oil exports to Chinese strategic interests.
Additionally, the commercial ties between the two countries have been booming, as two-way trade relations hit $20 billion at the beginning of 2007, making China the top trade partner of the Islamic Republic.

In the Americas
Under this new framework and concurrent with the emergence of new Latin American governments that have distanced themselves from Washington, Iran has been able to establish important regional ties and partnerships, with the objective of improving its international standing and relative power.
Iranian policies in Latin America have been driven by positive relations with Venezuela, with which it shares an “anti-American“ platform and a revolutionary ethos. The two countries also share a series of significant trade, commerce, energy and development agreements.
Most recently, Iran and Venezuela announced the ratification of an agreement to create a $1 billion oil and gas venture company, the Venezuelan-Iranian Oil & Gas Co. (VENIROGC), a 50-50 partnership between Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) and Petropars. Also, in November 2007 the two countries agreed to set up a joint project with Syria and the Malaysian group al-Bukhari to build a 140,000 bpd refinery in the al-Farkalas region east of Homs, Syria.
The solid relationship with Venezuela is used by Tehran to facilitate the creation of new regional alliances. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad explained this strategy by saying: “Iran and Venezuela can prepare grounds for the expansion of Iran’s ties with independent Latin American countries by improving their cooperation in different fields.“
With this objective, Iran also joined as an observer, at the invitation of Venezuela, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), which includes the main allies of Venezuela (Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia) and is conceived as an alternative to the US-supported Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
Through this alliance, Iran has already begun to improve its regional standing and increase its local allies. For instance, it led to the establishment of energy and cooperation ties with Bolivia, with which Iran signed a significant energy cooperation deal in September 2007, while the Iranian Petropars is already assisting Venezuela’s PDVSA to assess the vast oil reserves in the Orinoco Belt region.
Moreover, the two countries agreed on a five-year industrial cooperation plan. Similarly, Iran has reached out to Nicaragua to initiate commercial and energy projects, including the financing of four hydroelectric plants.

Conclusion
Locally, Iran is aiming at increasing foreign investments and assistance to improve its under-developed oil and gas fields and its extraction-production export capacity. This would have a positive effect on its domestic economy, and it would contribute to minimize the financial losses deriving from reduced investments and partnerships from the West.
Regionally, the increased political/economic capital and international standing can be leveraged by Iran in the greater Middle East, its most vital area of interest. In this sense, economic and political partnerships serve as power enhancers for the Islamic Republic.
Finally, Tehran is using its energy policy as a tool to guarantee its integration within the international
community.

The $700-billion-a-year pharmaceuticals industry continues to price products beyond the reach of the world's poor.

Drug firms are missing potentially valuable business opportunities by failing to meet the needs of consumers in developing countries, an international charity told Ipsnews.net Tuesday, November 28.
The group Oxfam International, in a new report, said the $700-billion-a-year pharmaceuticals industry continues to price their products beyond the reach of the world’s poor. Additionally, it said market opportunities also were being squandered by firms’ failure to develop more medicines relevant to poor countries and their intransigence over trademark issues.
“The industry is burying its head in the sand,“ said Jeremy Hobbs, the group’s executive director. “More than 85 percent of world consumers are underserved or have no access to its medicines.“
“Charging high prices, quashing generic competition, developing medicines only for those rich enough to pay, and fighting for harsher patent laws is an ineffective business strategy for new markets as much as it is a moral outrage,“ Hobbs added.
The richest 15 percent of the world’s population consumes more than 90 percent of its medicines. Millions of poor people are left to pay with their lives for the scarcity of drugs where they live: tuberculosis kills two million people a year and malaria another one million.
The report, “Investing for Life“, urged the pharmaceuticals firms to set prices for all essential medicines according to people’s ability to pay. Oxfam acknowledged that some firms already have done so but said such examples were few and mostly restricted to high-profile diseases like HIV/AIDS.
However, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations said drug makers helped 1.3 billion poor patients between 2000 and 2006 with donations of drugs, vaccines and diagnostic tests valued at 6.7 billion dollars.
Even so, Oxfam countered that the industry’s heavy reliance on donations “is unsustainable and sometimes counter-productive.“
The charity demanded that drugs companies research and develop more products to tackle diseases that afflict poor people in developing countries. Between 1999 and 2004, it said, pharmaceuticals firms brought 163 new drugs to market but only three of these targeted developing-world diseases.
Oxfam further urged firms to stop challenging poor countries’ ability to compel them to drop their prices or cede markets to generic competitors in the face of public health crises.
In recent years, companies have mounted legal challenges or exerted direct pressure to protect their patents against what Oxfam termed “the legitimate use of safeguards“ in Brazil, India, the Philippines and Thailand.
Yet when developing countries’ governments have prevailed, poor people have benefited and drug firms have maintained their market presence, according to Oxfam.
The group cited two instances where drug makers slashed prices in response to action by the Thai government. The cost of the heart drug Plavix was cut by 70 percent and the worldwide price of the AIDS drug Kaletra was reduced by 55 percent, the report said.
Drugs firms have said their prices reflect the high cost of research and development. Oxfam argued they could lower these costs by moving scientific and manufacturing bases to the developing world. Many firms have long allowed drugs to be made there under license, and some also have set up or have announced plans to establish their own facilities in China and other emerging markets.
Pharmaceuticals companies also have said that the prices patients pay for their products reflect pharmacists’ and prescribing doctors’ mark-ups as well as taxes.
They further highlighted constraints not tied to drug prices. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), an industry lobby, said many countries lack functioning public health systems needed to deliver services and medicines to the sick. Doctors are in short supply, with only three for every 10,000 people in many sub-Saharan African countries.
Storage and distribution systems are nonexistent or poorly managed, PhRMA said, citing World Bank estimates that for every 100 dollars African governments spend on drugs, only 12 dollars’ worth of medicines reaches patients.
The group further chided developing countries’ governments, saying they “have not made health care a spending priority.“
“Health care services have often taken a back seat to defence spending; even worse, there have been instances of available health funds being left unspent due to bureaucratic mix-ups and mismanagement,“ it said.

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has promised the “necessary flexibility“ in settling the outstanding issues in order to reach a trade agreement with the Asean by March 2008.
According to Hindu.com, trade ministers of India and Asean after an informal meeting expressed satisfaction over the progress made since the last major summit in the Philippine city of Cebu in January. However, a breakthrough in the talks--the free trade agreement was originally scheduled to start by January 1, 2006--remains elusive even though differences have been narrowed.
Particularly contentious have been four items--crude and refined palm oil, tea and pepper.
India had originally agreed to slash import duties on these commodities by 50 to 60 percent but only by 2022. Malaysia and Vietnam who are large producers of palm oil and pepper respectively have had reservations over the lengthy phasing-out period.
Already, the Indian side has shown some flexibility. For instance, while Asean wanted the duty on crude palm oil to be pegged at 40 percent only by 2018, India has already lowered it to 29 percent. No doubt, containing domestic inflation through larger imports of edible oil has been the motivating factor behind this cut. Yet, it also suggests that a more permanent duty reduction is possible.
In fact, barring tea and coffee where the current duty at 100 percent is considerably higher than the Asean requirement of 40 percent by 2018, tariffs on sensitive items are already close to the levels that Asean wants.
India has demonstrated considerable flexibility in other areas as well. The negative list has been pruned down to 489 items from 1,414 and value addition norms brought down from 40 to 35 percent. On yet another contentious issue relating to rules of origin, India has already agreed to a substantial relaxation.
While this would lead to more Asean exports to India based on imports from non-Asian countries, there is a possibility that other countries with whom India is pursuing free trade arrangements might ask for similar concessions. India would do well to include services in the negotiations.