Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – December 9, 1990

I reached the office at half past seven. Until half past nine in the morning, I corrected the prepared speech draft. Mr. [Masoud Roghani] Zanjani, [Head of the Program and Budget Organization] came. We went to the parliament together. The lecture lasted about two hours. It impressed the delegates. When saying welcome, Mr. Karroubi mistakenly said Speaker of Parliament instead of President.

I returned to my office. Prayer, lunch and some office work and then rest took time. I did not go to the government meeting because of the accumulation of work. I worked until the night and did a bit of setting up the library.

Mr. Velayati, [Minister of Foreign Affairs], [Mohsen] Nurbakhsh, [Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance] and [Reza] Amrullahi, [Head of the Atomic Energy Organization] came. Financial differences were negotiated with France. At the beginning of calculations, it seemed that about one and a half billion will be our demand, which the French say much less. It was decided that a clearer figure will be determined tomorrow, so that we can announce it to Paris. [Mr. François Mitterrand], the president of France, said that the two foreign ministers should agree.

At night, we had a meeting with Ayatollah Khamenei. We negotiated and made a decision about the agreement with France and the proposed exchange of arms and oil with North Korea, the budgeting of the command of the naval forces of the army and the IRGC by Mr. Dr. Velayati, [Foreign Affairs Minister] announced that the Algerian president wants to come to Iran this weekend; I agreed.