Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb.25
By Fatih Karimov - Trend: The National Iranian Tanker Company will pursue annulling new bans imposed by the European Union.
Ali Akbar Safaee, managing director of NITC, said the company will follow up the case in international courts to compensate for the losses it has suffered as a result of the sanctions, Iran 's Shana news agency reported on Feb. 25.
On Feb. 12, European Union governments decided to put NITC back on a list of sanctioned firms. The EU's second-highest court ruled last July there were no grounds to blacklist the NITC after it contested the designation, but the EU moved to re-impose sanctions on tighter legal grounds.
NITC - a major transporter of Iran 's oil - contested the EU's original blacklisting last year, arguing that the firm is privately owned by Iranian pension funds. It has denied any links with the Iranian government or with the Revolutionary Guards.
European governments should know that imposing sanctions on NITC would deprive the international maritime industry of capacities of a large and modern transport fleet, Safaee said.
Iran's foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said on Feb. 18 that re-imposing sanction by the European Union on the National Iranian Tanker Company was politically motivated and will harm the nuclear talks between Iran and the West.She recommended the EU not to take such measures.
Edited by CN