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Pakistan gathering not aimed at Shias or Iran: Erdogan

CAIRO: A string of meetings planned by President Gen Pervez Musharraf for leaders of key Muslim nations are not aimed at forging an alliance against Shiite Iran, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday.

Pakistan is to host a meeting of foreign ministers from seven Muslim nations on Sunday (today) to discuss how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bring peace to Iraq and Afghanistan. Media reports in the Arab world suggested, however, that Musharraf aims to establish up a Sunni alliance to confront rising influence of Shiite Iran in the region.

“This is not designed to isolate any country,” Erdogan told the Qatari-based Al-Jazeera television network. “It should not be taken from this (point of view),” he said in the interview recorded earlier Saturday in Istanbul, Turkey.

Musharraf has toured the Middle East and Asia to garner support for a Muslim initiative to stem the deepening conflicts that are destabilizing parts of the Islamic world.

The foreign ministers of Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are to gather in Islamabad on Feb 25 to lay the groundwork for a summit of Muslim leaders at an unspecified date in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The goal of the summit is “a new initiative to address the grave situation in the Middle East, in particular the Palestinian issue, and for harmony in the Islamic world,” the Pakistani foreign minister has said in a statement.

Musharraf visited Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey and Iran in recent weeks to seek common ground for his initiative. He did not invite Iran or Syria for the meeting in Islamabad on Sunday.

Erdogan said Iran and Syria will be invited in a later stage.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslan denied the conference aims at forming a Sunni alliance.

“It is not for Sunni countries, they are Islamic countries,” she told Al-Jazeera, according to its Arabic translation of her comments broadcast Saturday by the channel on another show.

Musharraf not announced concrete proposals to stabilize the Middle East, and it remains unclear how his ideas might relate to the efforts of the so-called Quartet - the US, the European Union, Russia and the UN - to revive its “road map” plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri said earlier this month that conflicts in the Muslim world were fostering Islamic extremism.

Musharraf said he was trying to gather countries who support “a conciliatory approach instead of a confrontationist approach” to the region’s problems.

Musharraf said it was vital to hold Iraq together. ap

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