Six heads of state, including those of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, are to attend a two-day “anti-terrorism conference” hosted by Iran, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Wednesday. “The international conference on combating terrorism will commence on June 25, and will be attended by six heads of states and a number of prime ministers and foreign ministers,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Salehi as saying.
The heads of state include Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, Iraq’s Jalal Talabani, Pakistan’s Asif Ali Zardari, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and Tajikistan’s Emomali Rahmon, Iranian media reported. “The West is the creator of terrorism and the East is blighted by it. We have high hopes for the results of this conference,” Salehi said. Sudan’s Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over his government’s scorched earth tactics in the eight-year-old conflict in Darfur.
Despite its blacklisting by Washington as an alleged state sponsor of terrorism, Iran has consistently maintained that it is the victim after attacks on its prime minister and president in the 1980s.
Iran also faces rebellions among its Kurdish and Baluchi minorities. On Tuesday, Iran said it had arrested four suspected members of Sunni militant group Jundallah in Sistan-Baluchestan province in the southeast wearing “explosive vests.”
