Efforts Underway for Meeting between Iranian, Saudi Officials on Hajj
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Head of Iran’s Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization said diplomatic efforts are underway to hold a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s minister of pilgrimage affairs to work out how Iranians would make this year’s Hajj pilgrimage after Riyadh severed ties with Tehran.
Speaking to the Tasnim News Agency on Wednesday, Saeed Ohadi said the country’s Foreign Ministry has undertaken to contact the Saudi Hajj authorities for arranging a meeting between Iran’s Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization and Saudi Ministry of Pilgrimage Affairs for negotiations about the Iranians’ possible religious visit to the kingdom for this year’s Hajj season.
He stressed that a main topic to be discussed in the possible meeting will be guarantees that Iranians will perform the religious rites in full security.
Given the disaster in Mina that killed many Iranian pilgrims in the previous Hajj pilgrimage, the safety of Iranian travelers to Saudi Arabia must be ensured, Ohadi noted.
More than 460 Iranians were among the thousands of pilgrims who died on September 24, 2015, in a crush in Mina, near Mecca, during the Hajj pilgrimage.
The incident marked the worst ever Hajj-related tragedy.
There have been doubts about participation of Iranian pilgrims in the 2016 Hajj since tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia ran high last month following Riyadh’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, and a subsequent attack by outraged Iranian protesters on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, which resulted in the Arab country’s decision to sever its ties with the Islamic Republic.
Although Iranian officials criticized the embassy attack and those involved in the attack have been brought to justice, Saudi Arabia has cut off all diplomatic relations with Iran.