Pakistan PM heads to Iran after US mediation request

Tariq Butt / Agencies

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is heading for Tehran, two government officials said on Friday, weeks after the United States asked him to help mediate between long-time regional foes Saudi Arabia and Iran.

A top official at Khan’s office and another at the foreign office confirmed that Khan was scheduled to fly to neighbouring Iran at the weekend.

It was not immediately clear if Khan had agreed to act as mediator.

“The prime minister is leaving for Iran most probably tomorrow, or Sunday,” the official at the PM office said.

They both talked to media on condition of anonymity because the foreign office has yet to make a formal announcement.

Pakistan’s foreign office spokesman, Mohammad Faisal, said on Thursday that Khan might visit Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The Tehran visit comes after Khan last month said US President Donald Trump had asked him to help defuse tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Washington blamed Tehran for a Sept.14 attack on the world’s biggest crude oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia. Iran denies involvement.

Separately Imran Khan on Friday said that his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi has “played his last card” by downgrading the annexing the occupied Kashmir, stressing that the residents of the disputed region will not accept the decision.

“Our movement is for the human rights of the Kashmiri people; God willing it will become massive,” he said while addressing the participants of a human chain event in the federal capital to express solidarity with the people of occupied Kashmir.

“Modi committed a mistake, he has played his last card.”

His address came after a large number of people gathered in Islamabad after Friday prayers to form a ‘human chain’ from D-Chowk to Radio Pakistan Chowk in a show of solidarity with the people of occupied Kashmir. The premier joined the chain as it passed through the Prime Minister’s Office.

Khan said Modi thinks that the people of occupied Kashmir will accept the decision of revoking Article 370.

“Modi doesn’t know that what the Kashmiri people have faced in the last several decades, it has eliminated the fear of death among them. Tens of thousands of Kashmiri people will not accept the decision and come out when the curfew is lifted.”

He said people had gathered today to deliver a message to the people of Kashmir that the Pakistani nation stands with them.

“We will continue reminding the international community that eight million humans have been locked up in Kashmir.”

The premier regretted the wall-to-wall coverage of the Hong Kong protests by international media, and the relative silence surrounding the treatment of the people of Kashmir.

“I want to highlight the issue of double standards as Kashmir is not a part of India and Hong Kong is a part of China but the proportion of coverage of the Kashmiri people is very less as compared to the issue of Hong Kong,” he said.

In a series of posts on the social networking website Twitter, he noted that occupied Kashmir was an internationally recognized disputed territory that had been illegally annexed by India with almost 900,000 troops imposing a siege on the people of the valley, imprisoning millions of innocent Kashmir citizens in their homes.

“I am puzzled as to how international media continues to give headline coverage to Hongkong protests but ignores the dire human rights crisis in IOJK — an internationally recognised disputed territory illegally annexed by India with 900k troops imposing a siege on 8mn Kashmiris,” he wrote on Twitter.

In his post on Twitter, Khan said that the communications blackout and curfew in occupied Kashmir was a growing humanitarian crisis.

“As far as I know, till now only a few people have been injured, maybe two or three people have been killed due to accidents” in the strife-torn city, he said.

“I regret that the world only sees that (India) is a country with one billion (people), so they can trade and make money from them, and money is more important for these countries then humans,” he said.