Pakistan tells Iran it wants to build trust after tit-for-tat strikes
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Iran said the strikes on Jan 18 killed nine people in a border village on its territory, including four children.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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ISLAMABAD – Pakistan expressed its willingness to work with Iran on “all issues” in a call between their foreign ministers on Jan 19 after both countries exchanged drone and missile strikes
The tit-for-tat strikes are the highest-profile cross-border intrusions in recent years and have raised alarm about wider instability in the Middle East since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted on Oct 7
However, both sides have already signalled a desire to cool tensions, although they have had a history of rocky relations.
A statement from Pakistan’s foreign office said Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani had spoken to his Iranian counterpart, Mr Hossein Amirabdollahian, on Jan 19, a day after Pakistan carried out strikes in Iran.
Iran said the strikes on Jan 18 killed nine people in a border village on its territory, including four children. Pakistan said the Iranian attack on Jan 16 killed two children.
“Foreign Minister Jilani expressed Pakistan’s readiness to work with Iran on all issues based on spirit of mutual trust and cooperation,” the statement said. “He underscored the need for closer cooperation on security issues.”
The contact follows a call between Mr Jilani and his Turkish counterpart in which Islamabad said “Pakistan has no interest or desire in escalation”.
This comes as Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar will chair a meeting of the National Security Committee, with all the military services chiefs in attendance, said Information Minister Murtaza Solangi.
It aims at a “broad national security review in the aftermath of the Iran-Pakistan incidents”, Mr Solangi added.
Mr Kakar cut short a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and flew home on Jan 18.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the two nations to exercise maximum restraint
The United States also urged restraint, although President Joe Biden said the clashes showed that Iran is not well liked in the region.
Pakistan said it hit bases of the separatist Baloch Liberation Front and Baloch Liberation Army, while Iran said its drones and missiles targeted militants from the Jaish al Adl (JAA) group.
The targeted militant groups operate in an area that includes Pakistan’s south-western province of Balochistan and Iran’s south-eastern Sistan-Baluchestan province. Both are restive, mineral-rich and largely underdeveloped.
The groups that Islamabad targeted inside Iran have been waging an armed insurgency for decades against the Pakistani state, including attacks against Chinese citizens and investments in Balochistan.
The JAA, which Iran targeted, is also an ethnic militant group, but with Sunni Islamist leanings that primarily Shi’ite Iran sees as a threat. The group, which has had links to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has carried out attacks in Iran against its powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, Iran and its allies have been flexing their muscles in the region.
This week, Iran also launched strikes on Syria against what it said were ISIS sites, and Iraq, where it said it struck an Israeli espionage centre.
The Iran-aligned Houthi militia in Yemen has targeted shipping in the Red Sea since November, saying it is acting in solidarity with Palestinians.
Inside Pakistan, civilian leaders came together to throw their support behind the military despite a deeply divided political arena in the build-up to national elections in February.
Former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a candidate for his party for prime minister, and the party of three-time premier Nawaz Sharif, considered an electoral front runner in the polls, said Pakistan had the right to defend itself but called for dialogue with Iran moving ahead.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan also condemned Iran, but called the strikes on Pakistan a failure of the caretaker government brought in to oversee the elections.
The PTI “seeks an immediate explanation from the unconstitutional, illegal, unrepresentative and unelected government for its complete failure to safeguard the integrity, security and defence of Pakistan”, it said in a statement. REUTERS
