Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi accused Tehran of “provocative acts” as top Arab diplomats met on Sunday for talks on Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic row with Iran.
Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi accused Tehran of “provocative acts” as top Arab diplomats met on Sunday for talks on Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic row with Iran. Mr Arabi was addressing Arab Lea-gue foreign ministers gat-hered in Cairo for emergency talks requested by Riyadh on the dispute, which erupted after Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Mr Arabi called on diplomats meeting at the group’s Cairo headquarters to “adopt a strong and clear common position calling on Iran to stop all forms of interference in the affairs of Arab nations”.
Arab foreign ministers vowed to rally behind Saudi Arabia. Sunday's talks in Cairo come after foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Counc-il, which groups Sunni Arab monarchies, expres-sed their “total support” for Saudi Arabia on Saturday.
Nimr’s execution earlier in January touched off anti-Saudi demonstrations in many Shia countries including in Iran where demonstrators sac-ked and set fire to the Saudi embassy.
Riyadh cut diplomatic ties with Shia-dominated Tehran the day after the attack and was followed by a number of its Sunni Arab allies including Ba-hrain and Sudan. Other Arab countries downgraded ties or recalled their envoys to Tehran.
Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday accused Saudi Arabia of using its row with Tehran to “negatively affect” peace talks on the Syrian conflict.
“Saudi Arabia’s appro-ach is to create tension intended to negatively affect the Syrian crisis,” Mr Zarif said in a foreign ministry statement. “We will not allow Saudi actions to have a negative impact,” he said.
Meanwhile, UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura insisted the dispute would not damage his efforts. “The Saudi foreign minister assured me that there would be no impact from their point of view.... In Iran I got the same assurance,” he said.
