TEHRAN, Jan 30 (AFP) - A special commission in Iran's hardline-controlled parliament is to revise a major mobile telephone network deal by giving the Turkish company that won the contract a minority stake, state media said Sunday.
"One of the criticisms from deputies was that Turkcell had too big a stake in the contract, 70 percent against 30 percent for Iranian companies," said MP and commission member Ramezanali Sadeghzadeh Sheikhan, the IRNA news agency reported.
"The commission therefore decided that the Turkcell stake should be 49 percent and the Iranian stake 51 percent," he added.
The commission's findings are subject to approval by parliament, as well as Turkcell itself.
Turkcell was awarded the contract in a tender in February 2004 to become -- under the name Irancell -- Iran's second mobile phone operator. The deal is conditional on the payment of a 300-million-euro (366-million-dollar) licence fee.
The company would be expected to invest up to three billion dollars in the project, which would rank among the largest foreign investments in Iran since the Islamic revolution 25 years ago.
But hardliners have argued that having a telephone network run by a foreign company contravenes national security, and could facilitate phone tapping or suspension of the service.
Deputies voted last September to give themselves the power to revise the contract. Their bill also targeted a 200-million-dollar contract with Tepe-Akfen-Vie (TAV) -- an Turkish-Austrian consortium -- for construction and operations at Imam Khomeini International Airport, a new airport to serve Tehran.
The moves have badly hit relations with Turkey, and the reformist government has accused deputies of being bad for foreign investment.
01/30/2005 13:47 GMT - AFP