Saudi Arabia Names Pakistan in Alliance Without Prior Consent

Speaking to journalists, Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry expressed his surprise when he found out through the media that Pakistan was named as part of a 34 nation Saudi lead military alliance.

Chaudry went on to add that Pakistan neither sort nor gave consent to join such an alliance and has asked the Pakistani ambassador in Saudi Arabia to seek clarification on the matter from the Saudi government.

Another senior official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also confirmed that Pakistan was not consulted before being included in such an alliance.

The formation of this alliance comes in the wake of a Saudi-Iran diplomatic row as a result of the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric. Shite’s calling for “devine revenge” attacked and caused damage to the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

It can be recalled that this is not the first time Saudi Arabia, made an impromptu declaration of an alliance which it claimed included Pakistan when this was not necessarily the case. The Saudi’s sought Pakistan’s involvement in a coalition for operations in Yemen without Pakistan’s prior consent although Pakistan later declined to join the war in Yemen.

Pakistan has had a long standing policy of not deploying its troops outside Pakistan except on UN missions. Pakistan had rejected US calls for an alliance against the Islamic State group (IS)

Pakistan, however, does have a counter-terrorism cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=52285

Posted by modousarr on Jan 11 2016. Filed under Latest News, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.