D8 working group starts meeting in Tehran

Tehran, Feb 28, IRNA – The working group of the eight developing countries (D8) started its 5th gathering here Sunday morning two days ahead of the D8’s 1st ministerial meeting.

The gathering was inaugurated by Iran’s Minister of Industries and Mines Ali-Akbar Mehrabian at the Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) in north of Tehran.

D8's 1st ministerial meeting is to be inaugurated on March 2 by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with the participation of around 400 Iranian and foreign guests.

Established in 1997 in Turkey, the group consists of Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey.

It is a group of developing countries with large Muslim populations that have formed an economic development alliance.

The combined population of the eight countries is about 60 percent of the Muslim people, or close to 13 percent of world’s population.

The objectives of D8 are to improve developing countries’ positions in the world economy, diversify and create new opportunities in trade relations, enhance participation in decision-making at the international level and provide better standards of living./end