Pakistan PM headed to Riyadh and Ankara amid prospect of US-Iran talks

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif says he will visit Saudi Arabia and Turkiye this week as his bid to moderate a second round of peace talks between the United States and Iran appears to gather momentum.

President Asif Ali Zardari said in a statement released on Tuesday that Sharif had briefed him on his drive to discuss the issue with his fellow mediators and to secure further negotiations, which comes during a two-week ceasefire that has halted US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Zardari urged the prime minister and other officials to remain engaged with the US, Iran and other key powers to try to sustain the peace process.

After unconfirmed reports on Monday that backchannel negotiations to arrange new peace talks were under way, comments from US President Donald Trump and the United Nations on Tuesday suggested there is support for Sharif’s push.

The optimism comes despite 21 hours of face-to-face talks involving US Vice President JD Vance and Iranian parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf ending on Sunday without any results.

Trump said in an interview with the New York Post published on Tuesday that talks could resume in Pakistan over the next two days.

The newspaper reported Trump had initially said the talks would be held in Europe but later called back to say it was “more likely” they would return to Islamabad, praising Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir as “doing a great job”.

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that a diplomat from one of the mediating countries said Tehran and Washington had agreed to more talks but the location, timing and composition of the delegations had not been decided.

Islamabad and Geneva were being considered as host cities, the official said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who met with the deputy prime minister of Pakistan on Tuesday, said it was “highly probable” that ceasefire talks would restart.

Any return to the negotiating table would likely test the diplomatic skills of Sharif and other mediators.

During the fragile two-week ceasefire, the US military has mounted a naval blockade of Iran’s ports and coastal areas in response to Iran’s throttling of the Strait of Hormuz, which has caused global oil prices to skyrocket.

“I think it would be unrealistic to expect … such a complex problem, long-lasting problem, could be resolved in the first session of a negotiation,” Guterres said. “So we need negotiations to go on, and we need a ceasefire to persist as negotiations go on.”

Reporting from Islamabad, Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder said, “The most important thing we have to take into consideration is the fact that the ceasefire is holding.”

Another vital point, he added, is that “now the US and Iran are acknowledging that the lines of communication are open.”

Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, had discussed talks between Tehran and Washington during a phone call.