Havana: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on the sidelines of the 14th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit, which concluded in Havana on Saturday evening.
Others he met on Saturday included Cuba's Raul Castro, who is acting as President while his elder brother Fidel Castro recovers from an intestinal surgery in July. Cuba took over as the new Chairman of NAM on Friday.
Singh also met Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the outgoing Chairman of NAM, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse, Mongolian President Nambar Enkhbayar, Mauritius Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam and Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister K P Sharma Oli.
Foreign Secretary-designate Shiv Shankar Menon said Singh and Ahmadinejad discussed, in particular, progress on the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.
Both sides expressed their desire to go ahead with the project and decided to finalise technical details at the earliest.
The meeting with Chavez was focused on economic relations between the two countries. Like Iran, Venezuela is a major source of oil for India and Indian companies are involved in two oil exploration blocks in the Latin American country.
The two leaders stressed there was great potential for the two countries to work together, especially in the field of energy.
Venezuela has also shown some interest in investing in India's infrastructure sector.
Chavez felt the two countries could work together in the health and pharmaceuticals sectors.
He expressed his admiration for Singh's work as Secretary-General of the South Commission in the late 1980s.
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