MINSK, Belarus (AP) – Iran’s president held talks Monday with Belarus’ authoritarian leader, who is considered a pariah in the West and has courted other vehement opponents of America.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was greeted by an honor guard at President Alexander Lukashenko’s administration building.

Mr. Lukashenko told him at the start of talks that “relations between Belarus and Iran have reached the level of strategic partnership,” according to Mr. Lukashenko’s press service.

Mr. Ahmadinejad said he considered Lukashenko one of his best friends, according to the press service.

During a two-day visit, Mr. Ahmadinejad also was expected to tour Belarusian enterprises. The Belarusian Foreign Ministry said last week that the main issues to be discussed during the visit concerned energy, trade and science.

Mr. Lukashenko, who visited Iran in November, is widely referred to in the West as “Europe’s last dictator” for his stifling of government opponents and independent news media in the nation of 10 million, whose economy remains largely under Soviet-style state control.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is locked in a standoff with the West over Iran’s nuclear program, which America and other nations fear is a front for an effort to develop atomic weapons – a claim that Iran denies.

He praised the visiting Mr. Lukashenko in November as a “brave and powerful” leader for opposing American policies.

Iran is under U.N. Security Council sanctions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, while Mr. Lukashenko and other Belarusian officials have been hit with America and European Union travel bans and financial sanctions as punishment for strangling freedoms.

A year ago, Mr. Lukashenko hosted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, another vocal American critic, who made Belarus the first stop on a tour that also took him to Russia, Iran and Vietnam. Belarus has close ties to neighboring Russia, but they have been frayed in recent years by disputes over energy prices and supplies.