ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign office announced on Thursday Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will visit Iran on July 30 to attend the inauguration ceremony of President-elect Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian.
This will be Sharif’s second visit to Iran in three months, as he previously visited the neighboring state to offer condolences on the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in May.
Earlier this month, voters in Iran gave a decisive win to reformist candidate Pezeshkian in the runoff election against the ultraconservative Saeed Jalili to replace Raisi.
Pezeshkian is now required to take an oath in Iranian parliament before assuming the office of the head of the state next week.
“At the invitation of the Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, [Shehbaz] Sharif, will visit Tehran on 30 July to attend the inauguration ceremony of the President-elect of Iran, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian,” the foreign office spokesperson, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, informed during her weekly media briefing.
She said the visit demonstrated the dedication of both countries to enhancing high-level interactions and bilateral collaboration.
“The visit attests to the commitment by the two countries to strengthen leadership level engagements and bilateral cooperation,” Baloch said.
Pakistan and Iran have had a history of rocky relations despite several commercial pacts. Their highest profile agreement is a stalled gas supply deal signed in 2010 to build a pipeline from Iran’s Fars gas field to Pakistan’s southern provinces of Balochistan and Sindh.
Pakistan and Iran also find themselves at odds due to the instability along their shared porous border, with their leaders routinely trading blame after militant attacks in their respective territories.
Earlier this year in January, Pakistan and Iran exchanged airstrikes, with each government claiming to have targeted militant hideouts in the other country.
Both states have since made peace overtures and restored bilateral ties through multiple high-level visits.
Pakistan PM to attend Iranian president’s oath ceremony next week
https://arab.news/y5mv3
Pakistan PM to attend Iranian president’s oath ceremony next week
- Masoud Pezeshkian won the presidential election held after Ebrahim Raisi’s death in helicopter crash
- Pakistan and Iran have made peace overtures after exchanging airstrikes earlier this year in January
Imran Khan not a ‘national security threat,’ ex-PM’s party responds to Pakistan military
- Pakistan’s military spokesperson on Friday described Khan’s anti-army narrative as a “national security threat”
- PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan says words used by military spokesperson for Khan were “not appropriate”
ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party on Saturday responded to allegations by Pakistan military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry from a day earlier, saying that he was not a “national security threat.”
Chaudhry, who heads the military’s media wing as director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), spoke to journalists on Friday, in which he referred to Khan as a “mentally ill” person several times during the press interaction. Chaudhry described Khan’s anti-army narrative as a “national security threat.”
The military spokesperson was responding to Khan’s social media post this week in which he accused Chief of Defense Forces Field Marshal Asim Munir of being responsible for “the complete collapse of the constitution and rule of law in Pakistan.”
“The people of Pakistan stand with Imran Khan, they stand with PTI,” the party’s secretary-general, Salman Akram Raja, told reporters during a news conference.
“Imran Khan is not a national security threat. Imran Khan has kept the people of this country united.”
Raja said there were several narratives in the country, including those that created tensions along ethnic and sectarian lines, but Khan had rejected all of them and stood with one that the people of Pakistan supported.
PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan, flanked by Raja, criticized the military spokesperson as well, saying his press talk on Thursday had “severely disappointed” him.
“The words that were used [by the military spokesperson] were not appropriate,” Gohar said. “Those words were wrong.”
‘NATURAL OUTCOME’
Speaking to reporters earlier on Saturday, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif defended the military spokesperson’s remarks against Khan.
“When this kind of language is used for individuals as well as for institutions, then a reaction is a natural outcome,” he said.
“The same thing is happening on the Twitter accounts being run in his [Khan’s] name. If the DG ISPR has given any reaction to it, then I believe it was a very measured reaction.”
Khan, who was ousted after a parliamentary vote of confidence in April 2022, blames the country’s powerful military for removing him from power by colluding with his political opponents. Both deny the allegations.
The former prime minister, who has been in prison since August 2023 on a slew of charges he says are politically motivated, also alleges his party was denied victory by the army and his political rivals in the 2024 general election through rigging.
The army and the government both deny his allegations.
