Spadework started for upcoming Chinese president’s visit

Islamabad
As many as seven federal ministries are currently carrying out spadework to fine-tune details and data in line with the proposed agenda for the upcoming visit of the Chinese president to Pakistan that many believe would change political and economic dynamics of the region, the sources told The News here on Saturday.
“The high ups of the government are working on the agenda and other details in coordination with the officials of many federal ministries including Planning and Development, Finance, Interior, Foreign Affairs, Communications, Water and Power and Petroleum and Natural Resources,” the sources said.
The sources said the relevant material has been forwarded to the Finance Division by various departments about some vital issues like special security force (in particular reference with protection of Chinese experts working in Pakistan), coal-fired power projects, solar power projects, additional fourth alignment to Pakistan-China Economic Corridor and people-to-people contacts.
They said that the Pakistani government would explain the reasons to Chinese President Xi Jinping why it was abandoning many coal-fired power projects including the Gadani Power Park and turning towards Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plants.
“While to date there are almost 358 joint agreements, MoUs, joint declarations and arrangements between Pakistan and China covering almost every sector of civil society. Now both the countries would evolve strategy to translate all of them into reality in the coming years,” the sources said.
The sources that said the issue of security of Chinese officials and experts working in Pakistan would be one of the top items in the agenda and Pakistan would provide details about special security force that would complete its training till August this year.
Currently, there are more than 120 ongoing Chinese projects and about 12,000 to 15,000 Chinese engineers and technicians are working in Pakistan on these projects and more are arriving day by day.
When contacted, Foreign Office spokesperson Tasleem Aslam refused to offer any comments but maintained that “We would announce the complete agenda before the arrival of the Chinese president in Pakistan.”
To a question she said, “No date has so far been fixed for the visit of the Chinese president to Pakistan and we would also announce it at the appropriate time.”