LONDON, Feb 12: Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri on his way back home from Europe left here on Monday for Saudi Arabia where he is expected to brief the Saudi authorities on the outcome of President General Pervez Mushrraf’s recent visit to the proposed contact group countries (CGCs) to build a consensus on the framework and modalities to move forward the group’s Middle East peace initiative.

Talking to London-based journalists of Pakistani media before his departure, the foreign minister claimed that Islamabad’s Middle East peace initiative had also sought to supplement Saudi Arabia’s efforts to promote unity among the Palestinian leadership.

He was referring to the recently signed accord in Mecca between Hamas and Fateh leadership.

He claimed that like Pakistan the seven countries of the contact group were deeply concerned over the possibility of further fragmentation of Iraq, the situation in Lebanon and the need for Palestinian unity as well as de-escalation of growing tensions between the US and Iran and rising Sunni-Shia tension in Iraq and its fallout in other Muslim countries.