ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will “always” come to Saudi Arabia’s assistance if the Kingdom’s sovereignty or territorial integrity is threatened, Islamabad’s ambassador to the Kingdom said on Sunday.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif traveled to the Kingdom on March 12, along with country’s powerful Chief of Defense Forces (CDF) Field Marshal Asim Munir, to discuss the regional situation with the Saudi leadership, following US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s counterattacks on Gulf countries.
The meeting came months after Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (SMDA), under which the two countries pledged that aggression against one would be treated as attack on both. The move was widely viewed as formalization of longstanding military cooperation into a binding commitment.
Sharif’s office said the prime minister and the CDF held a “restricted meeting” with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah and assured the Kingdom of Pakistan’s “full solidarity and support,” amid Tehran’s attacks on US bases as well as commercial and oil infrastructure in Gulf countries.
“Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif undertook a visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The visit was driven by the, you know, conflict which has broken out in this region,” Islamabad’s ambassador to the Kingdom, Ahmad Farooq, told Arab News in an interview on Sunday.
