Saudi FM praises Iran as a powerful country with strategic position

Tehran, March 16, IRNA - Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said Friday that his country regarded Iran as a powerful and great country with high potential which enjoyed a very outstanding strategic position in the region.

Making the remark in the first round of his talks with Iran?s Foreign
Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who arrived in Riyadh this afternoon for
a two-day visit, Saud al-Faisal blamed the wrong policies of the
toppled former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for the presence of foreign
forces in the region and said unity and solidarity were the only way
for the regional states out of the many dire situations created by
alien presence.

The Saudi official also expressed happiness over Iran?s efforts to
solve regional problems. He said Iran used its resources and
capabilities to aid Islamic states.

Mottaki, too, reviewed the latest developments in the region with his
Saudi counterpart and said further cooperation among regional and
Islamic countries to prepare the ground for better decision-making and
programming by the regional leaders would benefit the nations.

He believed both Iran and Saudi Arabia enjoyed very good capacities to
be used in establishing and consolidating stability, tranquility,
unity and peace both in the Islamic states and the whole globe.

Saying that the continuing failure of the Zionist army in the past two
years, not against a classic army but in front of a number of
resistence groups, has already disgraced the Zionist regime, Iran?s
foreign minister also said that it was high time now for further
cooperation and coordination among Muslim nations to bring about a
political triumph for the Palestinian nation.

Stressing that the time of warmongers in world political arena was
already over, Mottaki said the unilateralism wrongly promoted by
certain countries in the past few years was now being replaced with a
motto of change.