Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has issued a statement to announce Iran and Lebanon resolved to pursue the case of prominent cleric Imam Musa Sadr.

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian issued a statement on the occasion of the 41st anniversary of the kidnapping of Imam Musa Sadr and his two companions Sheikh Muhammad Yaqub and Abbas Badreddin in Libya in 1978.

Amir-Abdollahian hailed Imam Musa Sadr's measures in unifying the Muslim and Christian communities of Lebanon.

"Imam Moussa Sadr has not been among us for 44 years, but his determination in the fight against the Zionist regime is still the great goal of the Islamic Ummah," Amir-Abdollahian said.

The case of Imam Musa Sadr is always one of the important issues on the agenda of the diplomatic apparatus of Iran and Lebanon until the reality is clarified, he stressed.

Imam Musa al-Sadr was a highly revered Shia cleric of Iranian descent, who founded the Lebanese Amal (Hope) Movement in 1974. He came to Lebanon in 1959 to work for the rights of Shia Muslims in the port city of Tyre, located about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Beirut.

The prominent Shia cleric disappeared on August 31, 1978, during an official visit to the Libyan capital Tripoli.

He had constantly called for resistance against Israeli occupation in Lebanon warning that it would always be a threat against the country unless it is deterred. Over 40 years since his disappearance, people here say, his words are more relevant than ever.