ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif will embark on a peace mission to Saudi Arabia and Iran tomorrow (Monday) morning with an aim to ease tensions between the two countries.
The tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran spiralled in the wake of various adverse developments including the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia and subsequently the setting on fire of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and the Saudi consulate in Mashhad.
Official sources confirmed that the top civilian and military leaders will pay a day-long visit to Saudi Arabia on Monday where they will have meetings with King Salman bin Abdul Aziz and other senior royals. The discussion would focus on Saudi ties with Iran and developments in the Middle East. After an overnight stay in Saudi Arabia, the Pakistani delegation will land in Tehran where talks will take place with Iranian President Dr Hassan Rouhani and other senior officials. The day the prime minister and COAS will reach the Iranian capital, incidentally, will be the day when Iran will be free of the three decades-old international sanctions clamped on it on account of its nuclear programme. The visiting leadership will have further discussions in the light of their talks in the Saudi capital.
Sources told The News here on Saturday that Pakistan had been in contact with various capitals including Riyadh and Tehran to lessen tension for a number of days.
The prime minister is leaving for Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos towards the end of the week where he will have meetings with a number of world leaders. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the one hand would like to play a direct role in the stand-off between Iran and Saudi Arabia and on the other will have further discussions in Davos with world leaders.
Chinese President Xi Jinping will also visit Saudi Arabia and Iran beside Egypt in accordance with his earlier schedule on the conclusion of Prime Minister Nawaz's visit to the two countries.
Adviser to the PM on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Foreign Affairs Syed Tariq Fatemi and three federal ministers will accompany the prime minister, sources said. This would be the second occasion when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief General Raheel Sharif are travelling abroad together.
They visited Turkey towards the end of 2013 where the trilateral meeting of Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan was held in Ankara under the Istanbul initiative. Diplomatic observers are of the view that the task before Pakistan’s leader is quite daunting since Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait have severed ties with Iran while the United Arab Emirates has downgraded its diplomatic ties with Iran. The situation has also had an adverse impact on the relations between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Saudi-Iran relations were already at the lowest ebb due to the fighting in Yemen. Meanwhile, the Saudi Arabian alliance has also annoyed Iran that was kept out of it along with Syria
The whole scenario has complicated the mission of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who is widely respected in the region and by leaders of the both countries, observers opined.