Austin Gatt in meeting with Iranian ambassador

Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications Austin Gatt held a meeting with Iranian ambassador to Italy Ali Hosseini, in an unpublicised meeting that took place on 2 December.

The meeting follows another unpublicised meeting Hosseini held with foreign affairs minister Tonio Borg on 26 November.

According to Iranian news agency MEHR, the two sides have been discussing "cooperation capacities" in the same time as the EU was launching sanctions against the Iranian national shipping line Irisl, which registers most of its companies in Malta.

According to MEHR, Gatt said Malta was "ready to cooperate in different fields of navigation, transportation, information technology, communication, tourism and infrastructure industry."

Hosseini, on his part, also expressed Iran's readiness for developing economic cooperation with Malta in all fields of technical affairs, engineering, technology and research. Hosseini also underlined the development of the tourism and hotel industry between the two countries.

In November, Hossieni was reported to have told Tonio Borg that the "confrontational and hostile approach adopted by certain European countries towards Iran has been ineffective."

The news agency quoted Tonio Borg expressing "hope that the problems between Iran and Europe would be resolved through dialogue."

It is unclear whether ambassador Hosseini and Tonio Borg discussed the Iranian shipping line IRISL, which has been the target of a series of sanctions and constant monitoring by the United States.

Malta has been highly cooperative in furnishing the US with information on the activities of Irisl, whose ships were renamed and passed on to a new company called Hafiz Darya Shipping to bypass the US sanctions.

Malta is revealed by the cables to have worked behind the scenes to strictly limit Iranian access, although it is also clear that there was no intention of shutting down Irisl's operations in Malta.

Government formally adopted EU sanctions against various branches and subsidiaries of Irisl, which used a network of front companies in Malta to evade restrictions on its trade.

Irisl set up 42 companies in Malta registered on various addresses to transfer its ships' ownership to these subsidiaries. Almost half of Irisl's fleet was renamed and registered under the Maltese flag.

Irisl used a Maltese-owned company Royal-Med to serve as the agent for the private Iranian company Hafiz Darya Shipping Lines (HDS) which was created to take over all Irisl business in 2009 after it was hit by a US trading ban over its alleged role in supplying Iran's nuclear weapons programme.