'Islamabad event sparked security, intelligence coop. in fighting terrorism'

 In relation to the achievements of the Islamabad conference, Ali Larijani said “as turmoil in the region has risen over the past decades, so a meeting with regional countries to adopt a strategy to combat terrorism and remove the consequent chaos was essential.”

Saying that Russia, China, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan attended the conference, Iran’s Parliament speaker added “parliament speakers of the six countries exchanged their view points and experiences regarding security and intelligence issues.”

Larijani added that the parties also discussed the important role of economic development and eradicating poverty in fighting terrorism, therefore they stressed the importance of increasing cooperation.

Iranian parliament speaker emphasized that peace will come to the region if they have strong wills, adding “a statement was issued at the meeting that would make the results more tangible, and it was also decided to continue their multilateral meetings, and the next conference will be held next year in Tehran.”

Larijani went on to say that "one of the other advantages of the conference was that countries that had had some kinds of disputes in the past, after exchanging their views they got closer to each other.”

He pointed to a meeting with the Russian Duma speaker, where the two sides talked about pursuing railway and energy projects, and a joint committee was formed with Russia for the projects.

Larijani further explained "we also discussed the bilateral relations and cooperation with Pakistan, although there remained some problems for which a mechanism was set up, adding “other countries agreed on the economic cooperation, so it was decided to increase economic cooperation."

Ali Larijani left Pakistani capital city of Islamabad for Tehran on Monday after attending the three-day conference on challenges of terrorism, running from 23 to 25 December.