BEIJING: China’s vice president and foreign minister held talks with the secretary-general of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Monday, according to a ministry statement and the official news agency, Xinhua.
The talks in the Chinese capital of Beijing come amid heightened Middle East tension after an Iranian official said the country would treat any attack “as an all-out war against us”.
Those comments followed US President Donald Trump’s remark the previous day that the United States had an “armada” heading toward Iran, adding it was “just in case”, warning Iran not to kill protesters or restart its nuclear program.
An Iranian official in the region said on Sunday that at least 5,000 were killed after a wave of protests over economic hardship.
In Monday’s talks, Foreign Minister Wang Yi called for the building of a regional security partnership and the political settlement of hot-spot issues, the ministry said.
US officials had said an aircraft carrier and several guided-missile destroyers would arrive in the Middle East in the coming days.
The ongoing unrest in Iran began in late December over mounting economic grievances, including rising inflation, a steeply devalued currency and widespread dissatisfaction with economic management resulting from the sanctions that the US had put on Iran for years now.
Protests first erupted in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar and spread to other cities on December 28.
The protests have been marked by violence and arrests, with US-funded rights groups such as the Human Rights Activists News Agency reporting dozens of deaths and over 1,000 arrests within the first week of unrest, as well as confrontations between demonstrators and security personnel in cities including Western and Southern regions.
Iranian authorities and senior leaders have stated that the unrest is not only a domestic crisis but is also influenced by external forces, saying that foreign powers are attempting to stoke instability inside the country.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that elements linked to the United States and Israel bore responsibility for inciting violence, arguing that external adversaries sought to exploit the unrest to weaken Iran.
توفر شركة الإنجاز مجموعة متكاملة من الخدمات المتميزة في المملكة العربية السعودية تشمل شركة تخزين أثاث بالرياض وشركة عزل فوم بالرياض وشركة عزل فوم بجدة وشركة عزل أسطح بالخرج مع الالتزام بأعلى معايير الجودة والاحترافية