ISLAMABAD (Dispatches) -- Iranian Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Major General Muhammad Baqeri arrived here Sunday for an official three-day visit for talks with the country’s officials.
The visit takes place on the invitation of his Pakistani counterpart General Qamar Javed Bajwa. General Baqeri will meet Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership during the visit, IRNA news agency reported.
Upon arrival at Nur Khan Airbase, General Baqeri was welcomed by high-ranking Pakistani military officials and Iran’s Ambassador to Pakistan Mehdi Honardoost.
Bilateral ties, defense cooperation, border management, war against terrorism, regional and international developments would come under discussions during the meetings, it said.
Bajwa visited Tehran last November after 10 Iranian border guards were killed and two others injured in an ambush near the town of Mirjaveh in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan, which borders Pakistan
On Friday, English-language Pakistani daily The Nation reported, citing defense sources that senior intelligence officials from Iran, Russia, China, and Pakistan had reached an agreement to join efforts against Daesh’s presence in Afghanistan.
The officials agreed over integrated efforts for rooting out the outfit from Afghanistan during a meeting in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. Sergei Ivanov, the chief of the press bureau of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, had also told Russia’s TASS news agency about the meeting on Tuesday.
The quartet also agreed on confronting "all other terrorists groups” in the Central Asian country, the daily said.
The drive, it wrote, was aimed at "ensuring regional peace and to eliminate terrorism from the region”.
The meeting also discussed ways to stop the arrival of Daesh Takfiri terrorists from Iraq and Syria in Afghanistan.
The participants further agreed to share intelligence towards fighting terror.
The Russian side cited the Russian intelligence agency as announcing that around 10,000 Daesh terrorists were functioning actively in nine provinces in Afghanistan.
The Iranian side cited concerns regarding Daesh’s growing influence in Afghanistan, according to The Nation.
The group’s Afghanistan branch, known as Daesh-Khurasan, was "involved in planning continued suicide attacks especially in Pakistan,” the meeting was told.
Most recently, the group claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that killed at least 128 people in an election rally in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan on Friday.
Daesh began its campaign of bloodshed and destruction in Iraq and Syria in 2014. It seized large swathes of land in lightning strikes, prompting the countries to call for the help of their allies, including the Islamic Republic.
Iran has been lending military advisory assistance to the Iraqi and Syrian armies in the face of the terrorists.
The group was defeated in both countries towards the end of last year. Its remnants, however, are still active.
The group maintains a presence in Afghanistan, most notably in the eastern province of Nangarhar.