KUWAIT: Kuwait said yesterday that it respects Iran's "territorial integrity", a day after Tehran summoned its envoy to protest against Kuwaiti officials meeting Iranian separatists. In a meeting with Iran's ambassador, Kuwait's deputy foreign minister Khaled Al-Jarallah stressed that his country's foreign policy was based on respecting "sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs and good neighborliness", KUNA said. KUNA said Jarallah had reassured Iran's ambassador that Kuwait respects the "Islamic Republic of Iran's territorial integrity".

Iran's foreign ministry had said on Saturday that it summoned Kuwait's envoy to Tehran to protest against its officials meeting a separatist group and holding an "anti-Iran meeting". "Such actions are a clear interference in the internal affairs" of Iran, the foreign ministry told a Kuwaiti envoy, according to a statement. The Iranian statement did not specify which separatist group the Kuwaiti officials stood accused of having met.

But MP Saleh Ashour said on his Twitter account yesterday that National Assembly Speaker Marzouq Al-Ghanem had received a dissident from Iran's Ahvaz region without knowing he was a member of an opposition group in Iran. Ashour added that he contacted the speaker, who confirmed to him that he received Hakim Al-Kaabi as a doctorate researcher who has done research on Kuwait's democracy and that he had no knowledge he was a member of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz. MP Abdullah Fahhad, who attended the meeting, also confirmed that Kaabi was received as a researcher and nothing else.

Jarallah told Iran's ambassador that the meeting took place without permission from relevant Kuwaiti authorities, KUNA reported, adding that competent officials have "begun taking necessary legal measures" over the "disappointing" affair, which was undertaken in a "private" capacity. Iran and Kuwait have had relatively good relations in recent years despite tensions between the Islamic republic and other Gulf Arab states. Kuwait greatly reduced its diplomatic presence in Tehran in 2016 after Saudi Arabia completely severed relations with Iran, but it kept a charge d'affaires and two officials.

By B Izzak