Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday expressed deep appreciation for U.S. President Donald Trump’s “kind words of support” for the Makkah Accord, maintaining durable peace is essential for a bright and prosperous future for the people of the signatory nations.
“Together with the brotherly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Turkiye, Pakistan will continue to play a constructive role in ensuring the defense of our own countries as well as the entire region,” he wrote in a post on X.
“I would also like to once again commend President Trump for his courageous and decisive leadership, which helped avert a nuclear catastrophe in South Asia and saved millions of lives,” he said, in an apparent reference to last year’s conflict between Pakistan and India. He emphasized that “durable peace” was an essential prerequisite for a “bright and prosperous future for our peoples.”
Earlier, in a post on his TruthSocial platform, the U.S. president had said he was pleased by the signing of the defense pact between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye. “Very happy to see that Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and Pakistan have recently, and finally, signed the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement,” he said.
“It shows how the Middle East is coming together, and how countries will finally be able to defend themselves in a more meaningful way,” he wrote, describing it a “BIG, BOLD, IMPORTANT FIRST STEP.”
The tripartite agreement, signed on Aug. 7, aims to strengthen collective deterrence and empowers its signatory states to treat an attack against one of them as an attack on all of them.
Both Prime Minister Sharif and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar have said the pact is defensive in nature, with the latter adding that it open “to any country in the region” willing to uphold its fundamental principles.