In an address to a ministerial meeting on the sidelines of the 14th OIC summit in the city of Mecca on Wednesday, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al-Assaf called on Islamic nations to reject what he called Iran's interference in the internal affairs of the other countries.
"Tehran's support for Houthi rebels in Yemen is proof of Iranian interference in other nations' affairs and this is something that ... Islamic countries should reject," the Saudi diplomat said.
In response, Director General of the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Department on International Peace and Security Reza Najafi, who also heads up Iran’s delegation at the OIC meeting, vehemently rejected the Saudi minister’s provocative comments.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran rejects the (Saudi) allegations made at the (OIC) summit, and hopes, as a founder of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, that the summit held in the holy month of Ramadan would strengthen unity of the Islamic Ummah (community) and concentrate on the Islamic world’s overriding subject, namely the issue of Palestine,” he underlined.
The Iranian delegation in the Mecca meeting announced that Tehran joins the consensus on the documents ratified in the OIC ministerial meeting which express solidarity with the people of Palestine.
The Iranian team, however, has formally announced that the Islamic Republic avoids endorsing certain parts of the documents which could be implicitly interpreted as a recognition of the Zionist regime of Israel.
The Iranian delegation also submitted a written proclamation of its stances to the OIC’s secretariat for registration as an official document of the summit.