WANA (Oct 28) – The 4th Meeting of Interior Ministers of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) opened in Tehran on Monday, with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian urging member states to strengthen regional cooperation and build resilient economic and security infrastructures.

 

Ministers and senior officials from ten member countries — Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan — along with the ECO Secretary-General and representatives from Oman and Iraq as special guests, attended the summit.

 

Beyond security and border management, the meeting focuses on economic diplomacy, urban cooperation, and city-level partnerships among member states. Issues such as city twinning, cross-border collaboration, and the role of local governments in regional integration are high on the agenda.

 

President Pezeshkian emphasized that the ECO region “needs strong infrastructure for economic development, security, and welfare more than ever before,” calling the Ministries of Interior “key pillars of stability and economic resilience.”

 

Highlighting shared regional challenges such as illegal migration, drug trafficking, and terrorism, Pezeshkian said effective economic cooperation “cannot be achieved without joint security mechanisms and predictable frameworks.”

He described ECO as “a legacy of decades of effort toward regional integration,” pointing to the recent ECO Summit in Azerbaijan as evidence of renewed political will to shape the “ECO Vision 2035.”

 

The president also urged the creation of a regional police body, the “ECO Police” or “ECOPOL,” to counter shared threats, calling its absence “a major gap in the region’s security architecture.”

 

Referring to ongoing conflicts in West Asia, Pezeshkian stated, “Our region has faced more foreign interventions than any other in modern history. The largest occupation of the century still continues nearby, and the most horrific genocide of recent years has taken place in Gaza.”

 

He concluded by calling on Central Asian, Caucasus, South and West Asian, and Gulf nations to design “a coherent, homegrown, and development-oriented security architecture” to ensure regional stability and independence.

 

The ECO Ministers’ Summit aims to enhance coordination in security, governance, and economic development, laying the groundwork for deeper regional cooperation toward the organization’s 2035 roadmap.