Imran, Xi call upon world to help Afghanistan on humanitarian grounds

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chinese President Xi Jinping called on the international community to provide immediate humanitarian and economic assistance to the people of Afghanistan to alleviate their sufferings, prevent instability and flight of people as well as continued engagement for rebuilding of the country.

On Tuesday, in a telephonic talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping, PM Imran Khan stressed the need to continue the momentum of high-level exchanges to diversify the all weather strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries.

The prime minister renewed his invitation to President Xi to visit Pakistan at his early convenience as he congratulated Xi on the centenary of the Communist Party of China, the unprecedented victory in the Chinese people’s battle to eradicate absolute poverty and appreciated China’s stellar development in four decades of reform.

The two leaders felicitated each other on the important milestone of the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and China, reviewed the entire gamut of the bilateral strategic cooperative partnership and discussed the regional and international situation. Imran appreciated China’s successful containment of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as relief and assistance measures for the developing countries including the vaccine cooperation with Pakistan.

Taking stock of the negative impact of COVID-19 on the global economy, the two leaders agreed on strengthening bilateral economic and commercial ties including full realization of the potential offered by the Phase-II of the China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement to overcome the economic headwinds.

The prime minister lauded the successful, timely and high-quality implementation of CPEC projects and welcomed Chinese investments in the CPEC Special Economic Zones. He underscored that early start of work on the ML-1 railway project would complement Pakistan’s geo-economics vision for national and regional development. He appreciated China’s leading role in combating climate change. He briefed Xi on Pakistan’s wide-ranging measures for climate change mitigation and adaptation, including the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami initiative.

The two leaders agreed to strengthen Pakistan-China cooperation in the relevant areas and promote CPEC’s green development as a high quality demonstration of the Belt and Road Initiative.