Iran and Pakistan vowed Sunday to boost their military cooperation during a visit to Tehran by the head of the Pakistani navy, the state IRNA news agency reported.
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said closer ties with Islamabad were "of utmost importance to the Islamic republic" and that the two nations could "bring lasting peace and stability to the region."
Admiral Abdol-Aziz Mirza, who arrived Wednesday, delivered a message from Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf and expressed his nation's willingness to strengthen defense cooperation.
IRNA said Mirza also reiterated Pakistan's intention to review a recent supreme court decision that overturned the death sentence on eight men accused of killing an Iranian diplomat and seven others.
In Islamabad last week a foreign office spokesman said Pakistan understood "the concern and anxiety of the Iranian government that those responsible for the heinous crime of assassination should be punished."
The court threw out the sentences against the eight, saying the prosecution "failed to produce trustworthy evidence." Iran summoned Pakistan's ambassador over the decision.
Mohammad Ali Rahimi, director of the Iranian Culture Center in the central Pakistani city of Multan, was gunned down along with seven employees of the center in 1997.
Police arrested 16 people who were sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court in December 1998. The Lahore High Court in March 1999 upheld the convictions of the other eight.
Several other Iranians have been killed in Pakistan during the past decade, including six Iranian air force cadets who were shot in an ambush in Rawalpindi in 1998 -- TEHRAN (AFP)
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