Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif held diplomatic consultations with several Muslim counterparts on ways of stopping Myanmar's continued violation of the rights of Rohingya Muslims and its brutal military crackdown against them.
In separate phone conversations with his counterparts from Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia on Monday, the top Iranian diplomat expressed his grave concerns over the desperate plight of Myanmarese Muslims, ISNA reported.
Myanmar's northwestern state of Rakhine, one of the poorest in the country that is home to the Muslim minority, has witnessed a fresh wave of violence since August 25, when some Myanmarese Army posts came under attack allegedly by Muslim groups and the troops mounted a crackdown on the Rohingya in retaliation.
The skirmishes and the ensuing army assaults have killed at least 400 people, with some estimates of the casualties running as high as 1,000.
The crackdown has also forced nearly 125,000 of the impoverished community to flee to Bangladesh.
That takes to about 210,000 the number of Rohingya who have sought refuge in Bangladesh since October, when a major army operation in response to alleged attacks on security posts by Rohingya fighters started.
In his talks, Zarif called on Muslims states to be more mindful of the pains of the Rohingya people and take practical steps to end the inhuman violence against the minority and restore their basic rights in Myanmar. Zarif also expressed Iran's readiness to do whatever it can to ameliorate the terrible conditions of Rohingya Muslims, and its willingness to help find collective solutions in international organizations and Muslim bodies.
The Myanmar government has tried to block humanitarian and media access to Rakhine and contends that its security forces are fighting a legitimate campaign against "terrorists".
The UN Security Council met behind closed doors on Wednesday to discuss what many experts have referred to as ethnic cleansing, but there was no formal statement on the crisis.
The Rohingya are often said to be the world's most persecuted minority. They are an ethnic Muslim group in the majority Buddhist country and make up around one million of the total 50-million population.
The government in Myanmar brands Rohingyas "illegal immigrants" from Bangladesh, and its repressive tactics as well as attacks by the government-allied Buddhist extremists have left hundreds of people of the minority community deal and forced thousands others to flee their homes since 2012.
Demonstrations in many countries have raised the pressure on Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Some critics have blamed Suu Kyi for the crisis and called for her prize to be revoked.
