UAE condemns Iran over lawmakers' tour of islands

The UAE yesterday delivered a strongly-worded protest to Iran over a visit by an Iranian parliamentary delegation to the three UAE islands of Greater and Lesser Tunbs and Abu Mousa occupied by Iran. The protest was made in a letter delivered by Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Saif Saeed bin Saed to Iranian Ambassador Ali Reza Salari who was summoned to the ministry yesterday.

The UAE described the visit by 17 members of Iranian Parliament's Committee for National Security and Foreign Policy as well as the building of settlement projects for Iranian citizens as a naked violation of UAE sovereignty over its three islands. It said the Iranian move was also an attempt to impose an illegitimate fait accompli, reinforcing the occupation of the islands and changing its demographic structure in order to obliterate their legal and historical status in violation of the Geneva Convention.

The UAE said that it considered the Iranian action and all the works implemented by the Iranian government previously in the islands as null and void. The UAE demanded Iran to abstain from pursuing such policy of building facilities in the islands, to revoke all previous actions and to remove all facilities it had built in the occupied islands. Saed said that he had conveyed to the Iranian ambassador the UAE's sincere desire to resolve the dispute peacefully through direct talks or by referring the issue to the International Court of Justice, if the talks failed.

He added that he affirmed to the ambassador the readiness of Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Foreign Minister Rashid Abdullah to visit Tehran to start talks. "This will be subject to the preparation of agenda in advance for this objective to avoid the visit to be only a courtesy call with no tangible results," Saed added. In New York, the UAE protested to the United Nations over provocative statements recently made by senior Iranian officials, showing actual official stand and non-peaceful intentions of Iran towards its occupation of the three UAE's islands of Greater and Lesser Tunbs and Abu Moussa.

In a letter handed over by the UAE delegate to the UN, Jassim Samhan, to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he expressed the UAE's harsh condemnation of the Iranian statements which he termed as "provocative and irresponsible". "These statements do not only contradict declared political speech of Iran's government which call for solving disputes by peaceful means, curbing tension and boosting confidence and peaceful co-existence, but are also a flagrant violation of the national sovereignty and regional integrity of the UAE and the UN Charter and international law," Samhan said.

Samhan held the Iranian government responsible for such media escalation, which "destroy peace, security and stability in the Gulf and the entire world." Samhan reiterated the UAE's unshaken stand on the three islands and said these islands are indivisible part of the UAE's national and regional sovereignty and that a peaceful solution of this dispute requires political readiness and response on the part of Iran to peaceful initiatives of the President His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan to end Iran's occupation of the islands by negotiations or referring the dispute to the International Court of Justice.

Realisation of peace, security and stability in the Gulf region and boosting ties between Iran and Arab countries especially GCC countries require ending Iran's occupation of the three UAE's islands, respect of the national and regional sovereignty of each country, stopping threat to use force to solve dispute and removing weapons of mass destruction on the basis of international laws.