Aziz also told the committee that Islamabad would rather play a mediatory role between Riyadh and Tehran – rather than taking sides – with a view to easing mounting tension between the two regional powers.
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Joko said on Friday that sending special envoys immediately to act as mediators demonstrates the seriousness with which Indonesia is approaching this “important issue”.
Relations between the countries deteriorated sharply in early January when Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric and Iranian protesters responded by attacking the Saudi embassy in Tehran and a consulate in another city.
“The Advisor informed the Committee that Saudi Arabia is a close friend of Pakistan”. “This has fallen on deaf ears in Saudi Arabia”, he wrote.
They are expected to meet again on January 25 in the UAE, Arab League Secretary-General Nabil al-Arabi said at the news conference.
The execution this month of Saudi Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir Al Nimr and the subsequent reaction from Iran, including storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran, sparked the crisis in the already tense relationship between the two countries.
In Yemen, Iran supports the Shiite al-Houthi rebels, while Saudi Arabia in April 2015 cobbled together a Sunni coalition that last week ended a fragile cease-fire that had been in place since the 15 of December previous year.
Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran over attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic.
Zarif, writing Sunday in The New York Times, said Saudi Arabia has been responsible for increasing confrontation in the region out of fear that Iran’s normalizing ties with the rest of the world would expose Riyadh’s “active sponsorship of violent extremism”.
The Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Javad Zarif, meanwhile, had noticed that the Obama administration refrained from criticizing Iran after the regime in Tehran allowed angry mobs to set Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic missions on fire.
Saudi Arabia and Iran are the largest and fifth-biggest oil producers in OPEC, respectively.
He also said Iran had showed restraint after events such as last year’s Haj, where 464 Iranians were among more than 2,000 pilgrims killed in a stampede, and had not cut or reduced its diplomatic relations with the kingdom. It’s a potentially rich country and a major competitor to Saudi Arabia.
These analysts suggest Saudi Arabia was aiming to crush support for Sunni jihadists active in the kingdom without alienating more moderate Sunnis.
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The council urged the global community to take necessary measures to compel Iran to respect the principle of good neighborliness, to stop its destabilizing activities in the region, to stop its support for terrorism, to cease interfering in the internal affairs of the GCC countries and other countries in the region, and to end the use of force or threat of force.
