The Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) in its Saturday meeting issued a contradictory statement on Iran's relations with one of its members. On the one hand, the PGCC member states "assured their commitment and support to the position of the UAE... on the occupied islands." On the other hand, they call for bilateral talks between Iran and the UAE. The statement suffers from several serious drawbacks: (i) When the PGCC commits itself to supporting the UAE in its misunderstandings with Iran, it can no longer be considered a well-wisher; (ii) the PGCC states in its statement, in fact, it repeats verbatim the baseless claims of the UAE on the Iranian islands; (iii) the statement represents flagrant ignorance of historical facts -- biased and one-sided; (iv) using the word "occupation" for the islands, which belong to Iran, indicates that the signatories of the statement are either under pressure of one or more foreign powers -- which are necessarily hostile to the UAE's and Iran's interests -- or they are not familiar with simple historical facts about the Iranian islands.

In fact, Iran has announced several times that it is ready to hold talks with the United Arab Emirates in order to remove misunderstandings about the island of Abu Musa. We believe that the PGCC member states can play a positive role in bringing about friendship and cooperation to the region. In order to fulfil this goal, they must encourage the UAE to sit at the negotiating