By Ariba Shahid, Jonathan Spicer and Mubasher Bukhari<\/p>\n
ISLAMABAD\/ISTANBUL, March 29 (Reuters) – Pakistan hosted talks with Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia on Sunday as part of its efforts to broker an end to the Iran \u200cwar, with initial discussions focused on proposals to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, sources familiar \u200cwith the matter said.<\/p>\n
Foreign ministers from the three regional powers landed in Islamabad for the talks as Iran warned the U.S. against launching a \u200bground attack and global oil prices surged amid continued fighting between Iran, the U.S. and Israel.<\/p>\n
The countries meeting in Pakistan have floated proposals to Washington tied to maritime traffic and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, five sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as part of wider efforts to stabilise shipping flows.<\/p>\n
The Strait of Hormuz was previously a conduit for about \u200ca fifth of global oil and liquefied \u2060natural gas supplies, but Iran has effectively halted shipping flows through it in response to the U.S. and Israeli air strikes that began a month ago.<\/p>\n
PROPOSALS ON REOPENING HORMUZ<\/p>\n
Pakistan, which \u2060like Turkey borders Iran, has leveraged its close ties to both Tehran and Washington to emerge as a key diplomatic channel in the conflict, while Ankara and Cairo have also played a role.<\/p>\n
A source from Pakistan said proposals, including from Egypt, had \u200bbeen forwarded \u200bto the White House by the countries before Sunday’s meeting \u200band that they included Suez Canal-style fee structures.<\/p>\n
Two \u200cother Pakistani sources said Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia could form a consortium to manage oil flows through the waterway, and had asked Pakistan to participate. The first Pakistani source said Islamabad had not been formally asked to join and maintains that it will not.<\/p>\n
The proposal for a management consortium had been discussed with the U.S. and Iran, the sources said. The first Pakistani source said the country’s army chief Asim Munir had been in regular contact with U.S. \u200cVice President JD Vance.<\/p>\n
Egypt’s and Pakistan’s foreign ministries did not respond to \u200ba request for comment. The Saudi government media office and the \u200bWhite House did not immediately reply to a \u200bcomment request.<\/p>\n
A Turkish diplomatic source said Ankara’s priority was securing a ceasefire.<\/p>\n
“Ensuring the safe passage of \u200cships could serve as an important confidence-building measure \u200bin this regard,” the person \u200bsaid, requesting anonymity.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Sunday, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar held separate one-on-one meetings with his Turkish and Egyptian counterparts, stressing dialogue and sustained diplomatic engagement, the foreign office said.<\/p>\n
Separately, Dar said in a post on \u200bX that Iran had agreed to \u200callow 20 more Pakistani-flagged ships through the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Ariba Shahid and Mubasher Bukhari in \u200bIslamabad and Jonathan Spicer in Istanbul; Additonal reporting by Mohamed Ezz in Cairo, Maha El Dahan \u200bin Dubai and Saad Sayeed in BangkokEditing by Helen Popper)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ariba Shahid, Jonathan Spicer and Mubasher Bukhari ISLAMABAD\/ISTANBUL, March 29 (Reuters) – Pakistan hosted talks with Turkey,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[655,102,34,650,16016,50,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-41513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-strait-of-hormuz","8":"tag-egypt","9":"tag-hormuz","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-pakistan","12":"tag-proposals","13":"tag-saudi-arabia","14":"tag-strait-of-hormuz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116313245851668988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}