Iran to ask UN for fostering global consensus to address dust storms

“Today a letter signed by me as well as head of the Environment Department Massoumeh Ebtekar will be sent to the UN chief on the dust storms overwhelming the region,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Sunday during a meeting on the dust storms in Iran and the region.

We have called for generating global consensus and persuading Iran’s neighboring countries to collaborate with the Islamic Republic to address the problem, Zarif said.

Unfortunately, developments in 2011 resulted in obstacles on the way of regional cooperation shaped to tackle the dust storm problem in the region, Zarif said.

“The conditions in Iraq and Syria and all the ruins caused by conflicts in the two nations have highly contributed to the formation of dust storms affecting the region and Iran,” he said.

The foreign minister also said that fostering international and regional cooperation and generating a global consensus and finding a practical approach to solve the issue tend to be very time-consuming and no special outcomes are expected in short term.

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