Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Thursday apprised lawmakers of recent developments in Pakistan’s ties with Iran, saying they had recently seen an uptick following the sharing of information regarding developments at the border and the prime minister’s visit to Tehran.
Qureshi, speaking to MNAs on the floor of the National Assembly, said that some governments don’t want positive relations between Pakistan and Iran. “Geopolitics comes into the mix,” he said.
“There are many elements involved who don’t wish matters to improve, so now and then there is some sort of incident and they try to breed misunderstandings between Iran and Pakistan,” Qureshi explained. “Our government has tried to remove these misunderstandings.”
The foreign minister pointed out that some MNAs may already know that Iran and some other regional Muslim countries have a sensitive relationship, while “they have good ties with us”.
“It’s a delicate balance that we have to maintain, and the House must understand those sensitivities and concerns,” the foreign minister said.
Qureshi explained the steps Pakistan and Iran had taken to engage with each other. “I held meetings with the Iranian foreign minister four times ─ twice in Islamabad, once in Tehran and once in Istanbul. During that we discussed the overall situation, border challenges, ways to maintain peace on the border, ways to manage it by agreeing to create a joint centre,” he said, so that if there are any attacks, there are procedures in place to deal with them.
“We have cooperated with each other, some steps have been taken. We are increasing some of our Frontier Corps regiments, we are building a headquarters in Turbat so that there is a rapid response, our helicopter surveillance (near the border) has increased, and we have agreed on the formation of a joint border centre and border fencing,” he said.
“The prime minister, during his visit to Iran, spoke to Iranian leadership and laid matters out before them. The misunderstandings that existing between our security officials were removed and a more positive and enabling environment has been created,” he said.
He recalled two recent instances that took place near the border with Iran ─ the first in which at least 12 Iranian border guards had been abducted allegedly by Jaish al-Adl militants, and the second in which some 14 Pakistanis were killed on the Makran Coastal Highway by terrorist groups allegedly based in Iran.
He said when the Ormara massacre had happened, Pakistan had told Iran it is a “sensitive matter” and asked them for cooperation in the matter instead of accusing them. “We told them where the camps are, according to our intelligence, and what their linkages were,” he said, describing the process of sharing of information so that cooperation could take place in this matter.
Similarly, Qureshi said, Pakistan had ─ regarding the abductions of Iranian border guards ─ “cooperated at once, and our forces acted and recovered their people and handed them over immediately, which created goodwill”.
