TEHRAN (ecoideal)- Pakistani Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal underlined that his country's Gwadar port is not a rival of Iran's Chabahar port, and called for the expansion of cooperation between the two countries.
"Islamabad does not look at Chabahar as a competing port rather it is a complementary to Gwadar port of Pakistan," Iqbal said on Wednesday, addressing a conference on Pakistan-China-Iran: A Trident of Regional Connectivity, organized by Institute of Strategic Studies, in Islamabad.
He reiterated that Pakistan believes in the vision of regional connectivity for shared prosperity, and said, "We are looking forward to develop strong cooperation between Iran and Pakistan through these two ports."
“The age of geopolitics is over and the time has come for Pakistan to focus on geo-economics while looking for the regional options…China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) envisages regional connectivity, therefore, we are looking forward to Iran for developing new infrastructure in the region and beyond,” Iqbal said.
In a relevant development in November, the Pakistani foreign ministry underlined that Iran's Chabahar and Pakistan's Gwadar ports complement each other.
"We do not consider Chabahar as move to bypass Pakistan," Pakistani Foreign Ministry Spokesman Muhammad Faisal said in his weekly news briefing in Islamabad.
He said that Pakistan regularly exports wheat and other items to Afghanistan and also enjoys good trade ties with Iran and China, adding, "We have no problem with Chabahar."
Just some 72 km West of China-developed Gwadar port in Pakistan’s restive province of Baluchistan, Chabahar, on the mouth of the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, provides India a land-sea access route into Afghanistan and Central Asia through the Bandar Abbas-Caspian Sea axis.
Several foreign countries are willing to make huge investments in economic and infrastructure projects of Chabahar Port following the July 14 agreement between Tehran and six world powers but Iran is scrutinizing the offers to select the most qualified ones as its future partners.
Source: Farsnews