Iran and Saudi Arabia Discuss Resuming Ties

The foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia met in New York to discuss resuming diplomatic ties after a 2 1/2-year rift, Iran said Monday. The move could further isolate Iraq in the Persian Gulf crisis.

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, monitored in Cyprus, said the meeting between Iran’s Ali Akbar Velayati and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Saud al Faisal took place Sunday at United Nations headquarters.

It was the first time that senior officials from the two Muslim nations have met since the Saudis broke off ties April 26, 1988, accusing Iran of terrorism and subversion. Saudi Arabia was one of Iraq’s main backers in the Iran-Iraq War.

The meeting apparently did not go much beyond both sides spelling out their positions. But it was the most positive sign yet that the two countries may be moving toward a rapprochement amid the political upheaval triggered by Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

The meeting apparently came out of a mediation effort by Syrian President Hafez Assad, Iran’s key Arab ally and longtime rival of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

Assad, who is now also allied with the United States and Saudi Arabia against Iraq, visited Tehran for the first time last month. He apparently encouraged Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani to speed up efforts to end the feud with Riyadh.

IRNA gave no timetable for a rapprochement. But it quoted Saud as saying that his country is eager to resolve the issue of how many pilgrims Iran can send to Mecca, Islam’s holiest shrine, before the next pilgrimage season, which starts next June.

In 1987, more than 400 people, most of them Iranian pilgrims, were killed in what the Saudis said were Iranian-inspired riots in Mecca, birthplace of the Prophet Mohammed, Islam’s founder.

The next year, the Saudis announced a quota system that would have cut the Iranian contingent from 150,000 to about 55,000. Iran has boycotted the annual pilgrimage since then.

Veering toward a tougher line against Iraq, Rafsanjani, in a speech to delegates to a Tehran trade fair, Monday assailed the invasion of Kuwait as a “malevolent measure.”

His censure of the Baghdad regime marked the latest turn of the Iranian government, which has steadfastly opposed the invasion but has sent signals that the presence of Western forces in the Persian Gulf is also a threat.