JEDDAH/TEHRAN, 4 June — A high-ranking Iranian official yesterday called upon Saudi Arabia and other friendly states to mediate between Iran and the United Arab Emirates to end their islands row.
“The countries which have good ties with both Iran and the UAE could play a major role in settling the dispute. Saudi Arabia is one of these countries,” Muhammad Rida Khatami, deputy chairman of the Iranian Shoura Council, told the official Saudi Press Agency.
Khatami said the mediating countries must look at the issue without any bias. “These border disputes are not restricted to Iran and the UAE as they are found among GCC states which try to settle them through negotiations,” he said.
Khatami’s statement came after Gulf foreign ministers yesterday urged Tehran to accept World Court arbitration in its dispute with the UAE over three strategic islands.
The ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), of which the UAE is a member, “invited Iran to submit the conflict to the International Court of Justice” in The Hague.
They criticized “Iran’s rejection of all peaceful initiatives for a settlement” over the islands of Abu Mussa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs which command access to the Strait of Hormuz leading out of the Gulf. Their statement, issued at the end of a meeting in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah, also accused Iran of “provocation” for staging military exercises on the disputed islands.
The foreign ministers of Iran and the UAE met on May 26 on the sidelines of an Islamic ministerial meeting in Doha and renewed contacts on the islands dispute after a break of several years.
The GCC ministers in their meeting in Jeddah on Saturday urged international protection for the Palestinians. Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Muhammad Mubarak Al-Khalifa, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the GCC, also called on the international community to put pressure on Israel to put an end to its repressive policy and its aggressions.
The GCC welcomed the recommendations of the Arab follow-up committee and of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) on the current situation in the Middle East. The committee had called on May 19 for a “halt to all political contacts with Israel as long as the Israeli aggression and blockade against the Palestinian people and Palestinian Authority continued”.
