Raisi may also visit Lahore and Karachi to meet provincial leaders, in accordance to the assertion.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi will journey to Islamabad on Monday to meet his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s overseas ministry stated, as the 2 nations search to mend ties following lethal cross-border assaults this 12 months.
Raisi will probably be accompanied by “a high-level delegation comprising the foreign minister… as well as a large business delegation,” the overseas ministry stated in an announcement on Sunday.
The tit-for-tat missile strikes in January within the porous border area of Balochistan — cut up between the 2 nations — stoked regional tensions already infected by the Israel-Hamas warfare.
Tehran carried out the strikes in opposition to an anti-Iran group in Pakistan the identical week it focused Iraq and Syria.
Pakistan responded with a raid on “militant targets” in Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province, one of many few primarily Sunni Muslim areas in Shiite-dominated Iran.
Both nations have prior to now accused one another of sheltering militants.
A visit to Islamabad by Tehran’s overseas minister led to the 2 sides pledging to enhance dialogue and set up liaison officers in each nations.
Sistan-Balochistan province has for years confronted unrest involving cross-border drug-smuggling gangs and rebels from the Baloch ethnic minority, and Muslim extremists.
Raisi may also visit Lahore and Karachi to meet provincial leaders, in accordance to the assertion.
The nations will additional strengthen ties and improve cooperation in “trade, connectivity, energy, agriculture, and people-to-people contacts”, it added.
Pakistan is relying on a joint fuel undertaking with Iran to remedy a long-running energy disaster that has sapped its financial development.
A $7.5-billion Iran-Pakistan fuel pipeline supposed to feed Pakistani energy vegetation was inaugurated with nice fanfare in March 2013.
But the undertaking instantly stagnated following worldwide sanctions on Iran.
Tehran has constructed its personal part of the 1,800-kilometer (1,100-mile) pipeline, which ought to ultimately hyperlink its South Pars fuel fields to the Pakistani metropolis of Nawabshah, close to Karachi.
In February, Pakistan’s outgoing caretaker authorities accredited the development of an 80-kilometer part of the pipeline, primarily to keep away from the fee of billions of {dollars} in penalties to Iran due to years of delays.
Washington has warned that Pakistan may face US sanctions, saying it doesn’t assist the pipeline going ahead.
