The OIC expert meeting kicked off on Sunday and Zarif joined the meeting on Tuesday where he recommended Saudi officials to learn lessons from the past doomed fate of Baathist foreign minister of Iraq, Tariq Aziz. Zarif was reacting to an initiative by Saudi Arabia in 4 articles against Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah in single article in preparing the draft of the OIC final statement which had support of its allies in the Persian Gulf.
Zarif criticized the initiative as violating the spirit of the Islamic solidarity and unity and as a project which would serve Zionist interests in the region. “Time has passed when Iran was indifferent to Saddam Hussein’s anti-Iranian resolutions in the Organization which also had won the favor of Persian Gulf countries; Saudi officials should learn lessons from the history and avoid going in the same path which was doomed; condemning Hezbollah would only serve Zionist regime,” he emphasized.
Zarif believed that the present conference should be a place to improve Islamic unity; “conflicts between countries should be solved via bilateral diplomatic efforts and should not be on the agenda of a multilateral meeting; Iran strictly condemns Saudi abusing of attack on its embassy in Tehran as pretexts to embark on provocative acts and the invaders of the embassy as well; despite these provocations, we have set as a priority improvement of ties with all Islamic countries,” he asserted.
In last March, Iran’s delegation to expert meeting of OIC failed to participate, since Saudis denied visa for delegation members. In that session, Saudi’s prepared anti-Iranian initiative which was believed by Iran only to weaken the status of the Organization in the eyes of the international public, relegating OIC to status of a petty organization where members would carry out vengeful measures against other members.
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