Islamuddin Sajid
18 March 2021•Update: 19 March 2021
ISLAMABAD
Pakistan and Kuwait have agreed on a roadmap of engagements to upgrade bilateral relations in all sectors, the Pakistani foreign minister said on Thursday.
“We share a joint focus on strengthening our #EconomicDiplomacy footprint,” Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Twitter after talks with his Kuwaiti counterpart Ahmed Nasser al-Sabah in the capital Islamabad.
The top Kuwaiti diplomat arrived on a two-day official visit on Thursday morning on Qureshi’s invitation.
“During the meeting, the foreign ministers reviewed the entire gamut of bilateral relations, including cooperation in political, economic, defense, trade and investment sectors, and manpower export, and discussed ways to enhance people-to-people linkages between the two countries,” Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The two countries also reaffirmed their resolve to continue close collaboration at multilateral forums, in particular the UN and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Qureshi highlighted his country’s shifting focus to “geo-economics with central emphasis on peace, development, and connectivity,” while reaffirming Islamabad’s commitment to strengthening and diversifying bilateral cooperation with Kuwait in all fields.
He also briefed his Kuwaiti counterpart “on the economic potential of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), in particular its Special Economic Zones,” and invited Kuwait to benefit from the “vast and profitable investment opportunities in Pakistan.”
The CPEC, a $64 billion flagship project of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, aims to connect China’s strategic northwestern Xinjiang province to the port of Gwadar in Pakistan’s Balochistan province through a network of roads, railways, and pipelines.
The Pakistani foreign minister also briefed al-Sabah on the situation in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, highlighting “the serious human rights violations and attempts to change the demographic structure of the occupied territory,” the statement further said.
Qureshi stressed that a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute, in line with UN Security Council resolutions, “was indispensable for durable peace and security in South Asia.”
“Foreign Minister Qureshi acknowledged and appreciated the role of the Kuwaiti leadership in promoting regional peace and harmony, in particular the efforts of His Highness the Emir of Kuwait that helped in bridging differences among the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),” read the statement.
