KARACHI, June 1: Iranian Foreign Minister Dr Ali Akbar Salehi called on President Asif Ali Zardari at the Bilawal House on Friday and extended an invitation to the latter to attend the 16th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (Nam) which would be held in Tehran in August.

Dr Salehi was accompanied by Iranian Ambassador Alireza Haghighian, Ahmed Sobhani, Abbasali Abdullahi and other officials. Sindh Education Minister Pir Mazhar-ul-Haq, Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani and Additional Secretary for Foreign Affairs Asif Durrani also attended the meeting.

Relations between Pakistan and Iran, mutual cooperation and other issues of shared concern were discussed during the meeting. President Zardari thanked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for inviting him to the meeting and said the Nam summit was an important platform for exchange of views on international issues.

He expressed the hope that the summit would prove to be fruitful in identifying regional and international challenges and in formulating ways to deal with them. He also felicitated the Iranian leadership for taking over the Nam chairmanship.

The president expressed satisfaction over the state of the bilateral relations and said that Pakistan wanted to improve further its brotherly ties with Iran which were rooted in commonalities of history, culture and religious affinity.

Mr Zardari said the visit to Pakistan by President Ahmadinejad for a trilateral summit had given impetus to bilateral relations and given a boost to mutual cooperation between the two countries in the energy, trade, investment and communications sectors.

He stressed the need for the two countries to take effective measures to achieve the $10 billion trade target within the stipulated period. He said that preferential tariff and free trade agreements, encouraging barter trade in local currencies, facilitating export of meat, fruits, wheat and rice from Pakistan were some of the important measures to boost mutual trade. —Reporter