Former South African president Nelson Mandela called for greater world cooperation in Tehran on Saturday as he arrived for a three-day visit with Iranian leaders. "Today's world is like a village," he said, urging nations to increase their "cooperation and inter-dependence." He also called for closer ties between South Africa and the Islamic republic, stressing that the two nations were unavoidably linked by increasing globalisation. "One nation's economy cannot be considered in isolation without links to those of other countries," he said. During his visit Mandela is due to meet with Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as President Mohammad Khatami and influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.