Rasa – Hujjat al-Islam Naqvi said that Imran Khan visited Iran last week and has become very popular in the news. There has been no other trip of his or any of his cabinet minister which has received this much coverage and popularity. RNA – In his Friday prayer sermon delivered to a large and fervent crowd of believers in the Pakistani city of Lahore, Hujjat al-Islam Sayyed Jawad Naqvi referred to the visit by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, to Iran last week and said, “Our Prime Minister visited Iran last week and has become very popular in the news. There has been no other trip of his or any of his cabinet minister which has received this much coverage and popularity. The previous leaders of Pakistan who have visited Iran past didn’t receive the same amount of coverage that Imran Khan has received.”
The principal of Jami’at Urwat al-Wuthqa Islamic Seminary in Lahore added, “This visit was spoken of before the start of the visit. This visit was essential as Iran and Pakistan are two border countries and there are many issues occurring in the border region. Certain countries were provoking border conflicts between these two countries, such as India, which seeks to aggravate the Iran-Pakistan border issue. More than this, Saudi Arabia is interested in making the borders insecure. The Pakistani port of Gwadar has been formally handed over to China but still Saudi has talked about building a refinery in Gwadar, though they won’t build it.”
He said, “On the other hand, India has taken over operations at Iran’s strategic Chabahar port. The enemy of Iran, namely Saudi Arabia, has taken control of Pakistan’s port of Gwadar, and the enemy of Pakistan, namely India, has taken control of the Iranian port of Chabahar. Both of these ports are very close to each other. In order to reduce these conflicts it was necessary for one to make such a visit. Iran and Pakistan both have a form of politics. Iranian politics is completely anti-American and Pakistani politics is friendly with the United States and Saudi Arabia. Iran is under sanctions and hence they need Pakistan.”
Hujjat al-Islam Naqvi said, “Due to the sanctions imposed on Iran, all trade contracts between Pakistan and Iran has ended but now, a new negotiations have started for an independent trade deal between the two countries. This wasn’t acceptable by the United States and Saudi Arabia in any means. From a security perspective, a responsible person must visit there to reduce this conflict. The second objective was trade because there was no trade occurring between the two border countries. Recently, Pakistan has only engaged in formal trading worth $50,000 with Iran but this is because there is a lot of smuggling happening on the border. Goods are being smuggled from Iran into Pakistan and the markets of Pakistan are full of oil, construction goods etc. Therefore, the second purpose was to make an independent trade deal with Iran.”
His Eminence also referred to the terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday and said, “Sri Lanka is a neighbour of India and has been a victim of a long civil war. There are two main ethnic groups in Sri Lanka – the Sinhalese and the Tamil people. The Sri Lankan Hindu Tamil community is connected to Indian Tamils. Tamils sought independence from the Sinhalese and there was a almost 26-year-long bloody civil war which destroyed Sri Lanka. Hundreds of thousands of people died and there were big losses in regard to property and life.”
He said, “For many years, there was a peace agreement due to international intervention and now, terrorism has started again. It’s grievous that how such innocent people, amongst them men, women and the elderly, became victims of this. This attack which took place, as per news reports, that American and Indian secret services warned Sri Lankan agencies that these attacks were going to occur but the Sri Lanka government didn’t take it seriously and the outcome was this terrorist attack.”
Hujjat al-Islam Naqvi stated, “Immediately after this, the President of Sri Lanka, Maithripala Sirisena, changed all the security services forces. They are blaming them for negligence but it’s possible they were all involved. When they knew that such big attack was going to happen and no one took any caution, they didn’t raise any alert and they didn’t inform the president and cabinet. First of all the agency didn’t knew, and when they were told also they didn’t react. This shows this was a big plan.”
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