Iran’s Zarif in Turkey to Attend OIC Meeting on New Zealand Attack
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has arrived in Turkey to participate in an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on a recent terrorist attack in New Zealand that killed dozens of Muslim people.
Heading a high-ranking delegation, Zarif left Tehran for Istanbul on Thursday evening to attend the OIC emergency meeting due to be held in the Turkish city of Istanbul on Friday.
Turkey has called the emergency meeting to discuss the New Zealand mosque attacks and "increasing violence based on Islamophobia".
The country's foreign ministry said in a statement published on Thursday that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu would chair the meeting.
"Turkey, as the OIC Summit Chair, has called upon holding an emergency meeting for discussing the increasing violence based on Islamophobia, racism and xenophobia, in particular the terrorist attack that targeted two mosques in New Zealand on 15 March 2019," the statement read.
It also said that apart from the OIC members, the representatives of the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were also invited to the meeting.