Pak team’s Saudi visit postponed on Riyadh’s call

ISLAMABAD: Riyadh has appreciated Islamabad’s gesture of offering all its resources to “defend the territorial integrity” of Saudi Arabia amid developments that may not oblige Pakistan to send its troops to the holy lands.
A credible senior-level government source told The News here on Friday that the visit of the high-level official delegation that was to leave for Riyadh on Friday has been postponed following a call from the Saudi authorities. “We have been asked to wait for a few days,” the source said.
He added that Pakistan had been told that efforts were being made to tackle the conflict through the Arab League. “At a later stage, a special meeting of the OIC could also be convened,” the source said.
Regarding Pakistan’s offer, the source said that the civilian and military leadership had agreed to offer Pakistan’s resources for the defence of the territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia. The source added that the decision and the Pakistani offer did not mean that Pakistani forces would join any Saudi offensive against Yemen.
The source said that this aspect was discussed in the Thursday’s high-level meeting and it was unanimously agreed that Pakistan would take every possible step to defend Saudi Arabia from any foreign aggression. However, it would not be possible for Pakistan to get into a conflict or become part of the ongoing military offensive against the Yemeni rebels.
The source, who holds an important position in the government and was also part of the Thursday’s meeting, said that Pakistan realises that getting into the Middle East conflict as a party would have serious implications not only for Islamabad but also for the whole Muslim Ummah.
The source said that on the one side Islamabad has the best of relations with Riyadh and, on the other side, the country shares borders with Tehran. Instead of becoming a party to the Saudi-Iran conflict and their proxy wars, the source said that Pakistan could play the role of a mediator between the two to avoid what could otherwise might lead to an alarming Sunni-Shia divide in the Muslim world.
The source said that the Pakistani delegation, which was to visit Saudi Arabia on Friday, was supposed to discuss the details of what the Saudis expected from Islamabad and what Pakistan could offer them.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had asked Minister for Defence Khawaja Muhammad Asif and Adviser on National Security and Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz to go to Riyadh on Friday to ascertain the requirements of the brotherly country and make an assessment of the situation. The delegation was to also include senior members of Pakistan defence forces.