Played Role In Facilitating Saudi-Iran Thaw: Pakistan

Pakistan played a role in facilitating the dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the foreign office has claimed. “It is obvious that this [Saudi-Iran] agreement is a result of the mediation efforts of China and the constructive talks that it facilitated and the two sides were able to resolve their differences,” Pakistani Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told a weekly press briefing. “Pakistan, like several other countries and friends of both Iran and Saudi Arabia, played its part in facilitating the dialogue,” she added. In this context, the spokesperson recalled that the first meeting of the two foreign ministers took place in Islamabad on the sidelines of an OIC meeting. “But we do not wish to take away credit from China in this latest agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia,” she said. “We hope that with this agreement and the normalisation of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, there will be progress on outstanding issues including any differences that they have on Yemen. We hope this would have peace dividends for the region including in Yemen,” she remarked, according to Dawn.