Prime Minister Imran Khan will visit Saudi Arabia on Saturday to reassure the kingdom's leadership that ties between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia remain firm despite Islamabad's engagement with other Muslim countries
ISLAMABAD (Pakistan Point News / Online - 13th December, 2019) Prime Minister Imran Khan will visit Saudi Arabia on Saturday to reassure the kingdom's leadership that ties between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia remain firm despite Islamabad's engagement with other Muslim countries.According to media reports, the visit has been recently planned after signals from Riyadh that it was not happy with Prime Minister Imran Khan's decision to attend Kuala Lumpur summit being held in Malaysia from Dec 18-20.
The Kuala Lumpur summit is the brainchild of Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Tun Mahathir Mohamad. Other leaders participating in the summit are Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and Iranian President Hasan Rouhani. Indonesian President Joko Widodo too was expected to attend the summit, but he has reportedly succumbed to pressure and one of his representatives would now attend the meeting.Although it is too early to say how this initiative fares, the Saudis are already seeing the summit as an attempt to present an alternative to the Jeddah-based Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The increasingly dysfunctional OIC works under the de-facto leadership of the Saudis.
