GIVEN their close cultural and religious affinities, future of Pakistan and Iran shall be based on trust, cooperation, brotherhood and cordial neighbourly relations and it is heartening to see that security trajectory is moving in the right direction.
Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Nadeem Raza, who is on an official visit to Iran, called on Iranian President Sayyid Ebrahim Raisol Sadati where both sides displayed desire to initiate meaningful and long lasting security and defence cooperation between the two countries.
This is an important development and manifests desire on both sides to build a strong bilateral partnership.
In recent past also during their high level interactions, military leaders of both sides have expressed similar sentiments of strengthening their defence cooperation.
If this happens, this will be realisation of aspirations of our two peoples who hold immense respect and love for each other.
Given Chinese investment in this region and complex security situation, such cooperation is also need of the hour and serve interests of both the countries to collectively move forward on path of development while foiling evil designs of detractors who in fact are not friends of Muslim countries.
For long lasting security cooperation, we will suggest both sides to form a joint working group comprising of their senior military leadership to work out a way forward.
Pak-Iran porous border saw several security incidents in recent years. The working group must come up with a joint and efficient mechanism to effectively tackle incidents taking place on the border in order to turn it into a border of peace and friendship.
Time has come to eliminate these spoilers of peace as well as smugglers. The two militaries need to engage in joint exercises at different levels and training of each other’s military personnel in their institutions as this will lead to better sharing of knowledge and experiences.
Going a step further, they can also enter into joint ventures for manufacturing defence equipment.
Both Pakistan and Iran have a robust defence production industry and their cooperation in this field could prove to be very beneficial to take their relationship to new heights.
At the same time, there is a need to promote people to people contacts at different levels to explore more avenues of cooperation in other areas including agriculture, industries and energy.
