President Ahmadinejad heads for Senegal

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad left here for Dakar, Senegal, Wednesday morning on the first leg of a tour that will also take him to Cuba and Venezuela and from there to New York to attend the 61st annual session of the United Nations General Assembly. The president will be visiting the African state at the invitation of his Senegalese counterpart, Abdoulaye Wade, who was an official guest of Tehran on June 24. The two will discuss major bilateral and international issues. President Ahmadinejad is accompanied by Minister of Industries and Mines Ali-Reza Tahmasbi and Minister of Justice Jamal Karimirad as well as a number of Majlis deputies. He and his entourage were officially seen off at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport by First Vice-President Parviz Davoudi and a number of senior Iranian officials. After concluding his day-long visit to Senegal, the president will leave Dakar for Havana, Cuba, where he is due to attend the meeting of the Group of 15 and the Non-Aligned summit. From Havana the president will fly to the Venezuelan capital Caracas, where he will discuss agreements concluded recently between the two capitals with his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, who had earlier extended an invitation to him to visit the country. On the final leg of his tour, the president will head for New York, where he will address the 61st annual session of the UN General Assembly scheduled for Sept 19-27. He is also expected to meet leaders of various countries on the sidelines of the annual session.