Saudi Arabia and Iran agree to co-ordinate policies to stabilise oil market

Saudi Arabia and Iran have agreed to co-ordinate policies aimed at stabilising the global oil market, said Saudi Oil Minister Ali Ibrahim al-Naimi.
"The most important thing is that Saudi Arabia and Iran have agreed to co-ordinate to bring about the stability of the oil market," al-Naimi said after holding talks in western Saudi city of Jeddah with Iranian President Mohammed Khatami.
Commitment to the March agreement and the production quota of each country would help prolong stability of the oil prices, he said.

Members of the OPEC agreed last March to trim their output by 1.7 mm bpd.
Riyadh and Tehran promised to reduce their production by 585,000 bpd and 264,000 bpd respectively.
Oil prices have climbed back to about $ 17 per barrel since OPEC members began to implement their pledged cuts on April 1.
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said the meeting did not discuss any new deal to slash oil output.

Khatami was in Saudi Arabia for a five-day visit as part of his Arab tour, which already took him to Syria, Iran's long-time Arab ally.
Khatami's visit to Riyadh is the first ever by an Iranian president to the kingdom since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution which toppled the late Shah's regime and brought about the clergymen's rule.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran were strained during the past two decades, but have been on the upswing since Khatami, a political moderate, took office in August 1997.
Khatami has expressed the desire of easing tension and establishing mutual trust between Iran and the Gulf Arab countries.
During the past two years, the two countries exchanged a number of high-level visits aimed at co-ordinating positions on ways of lifting oil prices as well as strengthening bilateral ties.