A statement by the National Assembly said the delegation will comprise six deputies representing all parliament factions as well as Energy and Natural Resources Minister Armen Movsisian. There was no word on the agenda of their planned meetings with Ahmadinejad, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani and Saeed Jalili, secretary of Iran’s Supreme Security Council.
Movsisian’s presence in the delegation suggests that they will discuss growing energy cooperation between Armenia and Iran among other issues. The two governments reaffirmed their commitment to that cooperation during President Serzh Sarkisian’s April visit to Tehran.
The visit by Abrahamian and officials accompanying comes amid mounting political turmoil in the Islamic Republic resulting from last week’s disputed presidential election. Sarkisian was quick to congratulate Ahmadinejad on his hotly disputed reelection that sparked massive opposition demonstrations in Tehran and other major Iranian cities.
Several dozen supporters of Ahmadinejad’s main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, rallied outside the Iranian embassy in Yerevan this week to protest against what they see as the falsification of vote results.
There are an estimated 5,000 Iranian nationals, many of them university students and ethnic Armenians, living in Armenia. According to the Iranian Press TV, 1,625 of them took part in the presidential ballot, with 79 percent voting for Mousavi and only 15 percent for Ahmadinejad.