BAGHDAD: Iran and Saudi Arabia have resumed key talks in Baghdad, an Iraqi official said Saturday.

“Talks resumed last Thursday in Baghdad,” the official said, declining to elaborate.

According to Iran’s Nour news agency, “senior officials from the secretariat of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and the head of the Saudi intelligence service”.

Shiite-majority Iran backs Huthi rebels in Yemen, while Riyadh leads a military coalition backing the government.

The kingdom executed revered Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr in 2016.

Saudi Arabia cut ties with Tehran.

The talks in Iraq are the fifth round of talks between Tehran and Riyadh in the country in the last year.

“It is expected that a joint meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries will be held in the near future,” Nour said, describing what it called the “positive atmosphere of the recent meeting, which raised the hopes of a resumption of bilateral relations”.

After Saudi Arabia executed 81 people convicted of various crimes related to “terrorism”, including men linked to Yemen’s Huthi rebels, in just one day, Iranian media reported in March that Tehran had withdrawn from talks.

According to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the two countries were “neighbours forever” and it was “better for both of us to work it out and to look for ways in which we can coexist”.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian praised the remarks.

“We have different views and approaches on some issues in the region, but the management of differences by the sides can serve the interests of the two nations,” Amir-Abdollahian said at the time.

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