Tehran has signed an agreement with Minsk to launch an assembly line of the Iran-made Samand car in Belarus, the official IRNA news agency reported in Tehran on Saturday.
Under the agreement, signed by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and the Belorussian side during his just-ended visit to Minsk, a joint Irano-Belarussian Unison Company would be formed to implement the contract of 36 million dollars to produce the Samand car in Belarus, IRNA said.
Alexei Vaganov, a senior official of the Unison Company, was quoted as saying that the car assembly line is expected to be fulfilled in 18 months.
"By 2010, the plant's annual production capacity would reach 120,000 vehicles, enabling Iran to export the cars to Central Asian countries and possibly to the European Union," Vaganov said.
Mottaki arrived in Minsk on Thursday for a two-day visit.
During the tour, the Iranian Foreign Minister held talks with Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko and other high-ranking officials on ways to broaden effective bilateral ties of cooperation to escape negative effects of the ongoing global financial crisis.