President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he hoped more countries would join a defence agreement signed last week between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan aimed at stabilising a region wracked by conflict.

The so-called Mecca Joint Defence Agreement was signed on Friday .

“Our vision for it is not limited to the three countries,” the Turkish leader told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat daily. “Rather we aspire for it to grow, and perhaps appropriate conditions will emerge one day for all countries of the region to gather under its umbrella.”

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Saturday said Turkey expected Egypt to join the pact “in the next stage”, telling the Anadolu state news agency only “a few technical issues” stood in the way.

Egypt has not commented on the agreement nor on the remarks by Fidan, who will visit Cairo on Thursday and Friday.

Since the onset of the war, Saudi Arabia has grown closer to Turkey, with whom it previously had fraught ties, with Erdogan saying Ankara and Riyadh would “take steps that will elevate relations between the two countries to much higher levels”, without giving further details.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi is visiting Iran to discuss regional security, stability and other developments, the Pakistani foreign office said yesterday, as Islamabad tries to mediate a resolution to the Middle East war.

Iranian state news agency IRNA reported late Tuesday that Naqvi met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni.