Iran calls for release of its share of Hirmand River

Ali-Akbar Mehrabian made the remarks in a meeting in Tehran with Afghanistan’s first deputy prime minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

He referred to an earlier meeting with the Afghan official in Kabul where Baradar had stressed that the Afghanistan’s leadership favors resolving the issue through negotiations.

Mehrabian said that technical studies show that as much as 2 billion cubic meters of the river’s water had been wasted over the past two years while the Afghan officials had insisted that even a single drop of water would not go to waste.

The Iranian minister said that that sum of water could resolve water problems of both Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan region and Afghanistan’s Zaranj Province.

The Afghan official, for his part, said that Afghanistan’s leadership is regretful about the waste of the water, stressing the need for the water to flow towards Iran.

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