The foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia will meet in Baghdad, announced on Saturday the head of Iraqi diplomacy, whose country has hosted talks between the two rival regional powers for more than a year.
“Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman has asked us to host a meeting in Baghdad between the Saudi and Iranian Foreign Ministers,” Iraqi Minister Fouad Hussein said in an interview on Kurdish television Rudaw.
“I have contacted the Iranian foreign minister about this. We are currently caught up in preparations to try to find the right time to invite the Saudi and Iranian ministers, and they will hold a public meeting,” he said. said during his interview in Kurdish.
“The other meetings were secret and were between intelligence and security officials. Now it will be public, and between foreign ministers,” he said.
Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran severed ties in 2016 after protesters in the Islamic Republic attacked Saudi diplomatic missions following Riyadh’s execution of a famous Shia cleric.
The two rival powers, who accuse each other of destabilizing the Middle East, have however expressed their desire to overcome their differences and began negotiations made public for the first time in April 2021.
Thursday evening, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in an interview that he had been informed by Baghdad that “the Saudi side was ready to move the discussions to the political level”.
He expressed hope that the negotiations will lead to “normal diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
AFP
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