Pak PM Shehbaz to travel to Washington to meet President Trump on Thursday | World News
It will be the first meeting between the US President and the Pakani Prime Miner at the White House since July 2019 (AP)
Pakan Prime Miner Shehbaz Sharif will travel from New York to Washington to meet US President Donald Trump on Thursday, as the two sides made a renewed push to reset their bilateral relations.
Shehbaz is in New York to attend the UN General Assembly session. He will briefly travel from New York to Washington to meet President Trump, The Express Tribune newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing diplomatic sources.
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He will return to New York on the same day to continue his UNGA engagements, it added.
It will be the first meeting between the US President and the Pakani Prime Miner at the White House since July 2019, when then-prime miner Imran Khan travelled to Washington and met President Trump.
Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden, completely ignored Pakan during his tenure and never even talked to any of the prime miners on the phone, let alone inviting them to the White House.
However, since President Trump took office in January, there has been a dramatic and unexpected shift in the Pakan-US relationship.
The upcoming Trump-Shehbaz meeting comes against the backdrop of a noticeable thaw in relations between Islamabad and Washington.
In June, Trump held a rare one-on-one meeting with Pakan Army chief Asim Munir at the White House, a signal that the Biden adminration’s frosty approach had given way to Trump’s more transactional but open style of engagement with Pakan.
Diplomatic observers see the Shehbaz-Trump huddle as a continuation of that reset.
“The optics of the army chief’s meeting in June were significant. This meeting institutionalises that opening,” a senior Pakani official familiar with the process told the paper.
Officials in Islamabad believe the meeting will focus on bilateral ties, regional and international issues, including Afghanan, counterterrorism cooperation, and trade opportunities.
Analysts, however, said that while Trump appears keen to engage Islamabad, the reset remains tentative.
