Pakistan leads bid to mend fences between Saudi Arabia and Iran
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will lead a high-level delegation to Saudi Arabia and Iran this week to try to ease tension between the Muslim countries, a minister said Sunday.
Information minister Pervez Rashid said Sharif would travel to Riyadh on Monday and Tehran on Tuesday and would meet Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
“Pakistan is deeply concerned at the recent escalation of tensions between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the spokesman said in a statement.
He said the prime minister has called for the peaceful settlement of differences in the larger interests of Muslim unity.
“The purpose of the visit is to mediate and to end the standoff between the two countries,” a third government official said, requesting anonymity.
Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran are already fighting a proxy war in Yemen and support opposing sides in the Syrian conflict. But tensions have reached new heights in the past two weeks.
Local media said Pakistan’s powerful army chief General Raheel Sharif would accompany Premier Sharif.
Pakistan is a majority Sunni country but 20 percent of the population are Shiite.
Its decision this month to join Saudi Arabia’s 34-country coalition against extremism sparked a domestic protest by the main opposition parties, who called for negotiations between Riyadh and Tehran and put Islamabad under pressure to mediate.
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