“Iran and Singapore maintain a common view towards regional issues like terrorism, extremism, and Takfirism, and certainly a serious will for coalignment and solidarity of Muslim countries should be formed,” said Ali Akbar Velayati, the former Foreign Minister and incumbent aid of Iran’s Leader, at the end of his visit to Singapore.
The veteran diplomat referred to his attendance at the third South Asian Diaspora Convention (SADC) as one of the goals of his travel to Singapore and listed a host of problems discussed in the event.
“Poverty, underdevelopment, insecurity, unilateralism, and extremism, were listed as the roots of human society’s problems,” recounted the head of the Strategic Research Center adding that “some solutions were also brought up in talks, namely regional coalignment against these problems, especially terrorism which has claimed the lives of many innocent people of the region.”
When asked about Iran’s policies in dealing with different issues, Velayati articulated that the conference gave him an opportune moment to illustrate the regional, international, and economic approaches of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He said that the talks fruited into prospective cooperation in Chabahar, and Makran free zones of south-eastern Iran.
“Given the topics discussed in the conference, most of the questions posed at Q and A part were about Iran,” Velayati gave an account.
“There are unprecedented, valuable, and unique capabilities in the region which can be harvested by bilateral and multilateral ways,” said the Iranian official highlighting that he exchanged views with other participants on developing cooperation.
He contended that there are numerous areas of common interests, cultural commonalities, current necessities, and cooperation that can bolster bilateral ties between Iran and Singapore, according to his separate bilateral meetings with Singaporean Minister for Home Affairs, Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam, Deputy Prime Minister and Co-ordinating Minister for Economic and Social Policies, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan.
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