Türkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has met with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Antalya, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. In a statement on Turkish social media platform NSosyal, the ministry said the meeting took place ahead of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, when Shehbaz Sharif was in Türkiye to attend the international gathering. No further details were immediately provided on the content of the talks.

World leaders and senior government officials will convene in Türkiye from April 17 to 19 for the fifth edition of the forum, a major international gathering in the southern Mediterranean city focused this year on managing global uncertainty. The forum, held under the auspices of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and hosted by the Turkish Foreign Ministry, will centre on the theme "Mapping Tomorrow, Managing Uncertainties," according to diplomatic sources.

Foreign ministers of Türkiye, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are slated to meet on the margins of a diplomacy forum in Antalya over the weekend amid possibilities of a second round of US-Iran talks to end the war. Shehbaz Sharif is in Antalya after visiting Riyadh and Doha in a trination tour, while Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, was in Tehran to hold talks focused on arranging a fresh round of negotiations between Iran and the US.

Türkiye, a NATO member and neighbour of Iran, has been in close touch with the US, Iran, and mediator Pakistan and has repeatedly called for fighting to stop. US and Iranian officials were weighing a return to Pakistan for further talks as early as the coming weekend, after negotiations ended on Sunday without a breakthrough. Iran and the United States could not agree on an end to the war that US President Donald Trump launched alongside Israel with a surprise attack on February 28, triggering Iranian fire at Gulf states and igniting a parallel conflict in Lebanon.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)