TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Nafees Zakaria, a spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Office, said Iran is helping Pakistan to meet its energy needs.

Iran and Pakistan have regular mechanism of negotiations to discuss different issues, Zakaria said in an interview published by Daily Pakistan on Sunday.

Iran is helping Pakistan to overcome its energy shortage, he added.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the spokesman referred to the recent media reports about the connection of a suspected Indian spy with the Islamic Republic, and said Tehran has emphatically declared and assured Islamabad that it will not allow the use of its soil against Pakistan.

Islamabad arrested Kulbhushan Jadhav last month in Pakistan’s violence-plagued province of Baluchistan who had been reportedly “entered the country from Iran”.

Pakistan claimed he was working for India’s main external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

Pakistan also claimed that the Indian agent has confessed to “spying against Pakistan from Iran”.

In response to the claims, the Iranian embassy in Islamabad issued a statement earlier and said unidentified elements were not happy with good ties between Iran and Pakistan and were trying to undermine them.

However, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan later said that the arrest of the spy “has nothing to do” with Iran.

“Iran has nothing to do with the activities of Indian intelligence network. Pakistan and Iran are tied through decade long religious, social, cultural and political bonds, and nothing can come in way of our relations,” Nisar Ali Khan said.

The latest developments came after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited Pakistan last month and signed an agreement to increase annual trade volume between the two countries to $5 billion by 2021.

By Tasnim News Agency