Iran is looking to strip assets from Britain's collapsed automaker MG Rover rather than buying it, two Iranian state-owned carmakers said on Saturday. The 100-year-old carmaker, which once made the iconic Mini and the Land Rover, stopped production after failing to secure a rescue deal with China's Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp "SAIPA is not negotiating to buy Rover," said Alireza Nabaee, a spokesman for SAIPA, Iran's second largest carmaker.
"The ministry of industries and mines may be talking to purchase parts of that company's production line and know-how," he added.
Iran's ministry of industry and mines officials were not immediately available for comment.
Iranian local news agencies on Friday quoted a ministry official as saying SAIPA and Iran Khodro, the Middle East's biggest carmaker, were considering taking MG Rover over. SAIPA Group, which employs 23,000 people, manufactured 340,000 vehicles in the year to March 2005. It is 40 percent owned by the state and 60 percent by independent shareholders.
Iran Khodro too said it had no plans to take over MG Rover.
Iran Khodro has ambitious plans to produce one million cars a year by 2011 and has begun setting up factories in the Middle East, Africa and former Soviet states.
Iran's embassy in London on Friday said Iran was interested in using Rover's know-how and technology, but said other plans to buy Rover kits and assemble them in Iran had been halted.
The statement said earlier plans to assemble Rover cars by SAIPA and Iran's Dastaan company were halted to discuss possible comprehensive co-operation with MG Rover. "British officials were notified of this decision this week and Iranian experts and Rover administrators are scheduled to hold negotiations," the statement said.
Dastaan is a private car company owned by an Iranian politician from the south-eastern province of Sistan and Balochistan.
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