ISLAMABAD: Gen (r) Raheel Sharif left for Saudi Arabia on Friday to head a 41-nation military alliance after the government issued him a no-objection certificate.
Defence Minister KhawajaAsif said that Gen (r) Raheel Sharif had requested the government for the NoC. “The permission was given after approval from GHQ,” he said. His service tenure will be three years.
Raheel Sharif left for Saudi Arabia aboard a special flight from Lahore. He was also accompanied by family members. The special plane landed in Lahore at 12:00 pm and left an hour later.
Earlier, KhawajaAsif had informed the National Assembly that the Saudi government would announce the alliance’s Terms of Reference (ToR) in May during a meeting.
“Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and former COAS Gen (r) Raheel Sharif will attend the event,” he had said. He had further said that the former COAS would formally apply for the NOC after the ToR was made public.
He also said that the ToRs and the aims and objectives of the alliance would be presented to Parliament before a formal decision would be made on whether Pakistan should become a part of it or not.
The 41-nation armed coalition was initially proposed as a platform for security cooperation among Muslim countries and included provisions for training, equipment and troops, and the involvement of religious scholars for devising a counter-terrorism narrative.
On April 13, Asif had told the National Assembly, “We will stick to our prerogative when it comes to Yemen, and the agreement we have will remain binding.”
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) Shireen Mazari had raised concerns, saying that a military alliance could not be a solution to terrorism. The PTI had urged the government to determine the nature and purpose of the alliance and make its ToRs clear. “There are at least 10 militaries present in the alliance, who are also a part of a Saudi alliance against Yemen,” Mazari had said. “The matter is not of Raheel Sharif’s appointment, the question is if we should be part of the alliance or not,” PTI’s Asad Umer had said.
PTI Chairman Imran Khan had also opposed Pakistan’s joining the Saudi Arabia-led counter-terrorism alliance. Imran had said that joining the alliance against terrorism might spark sectarianism in the country. He had said that the government should conduct debate on the matter in the Parliament.
Earlier this week, in a meeting at GHQ in Rawalpindi, Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa had assured Iranian Ambassador Mehdi Honardoost that Pak-Iran ties would “remain unaffected by recent developments”.
“Pakistan greatly values historic Pak-Iran relationship and the same shall continue based on mutual trust and respect for each other’s interests,” Gen Bajwa told Honardoost.
Pakistan had also told Iran the Saudi-led military alliance was not sectarian and Islamabad will not become part of any anti-Tehran agenda.
Officials in the Foreign Ministry had said that since Pakistan valued its ties with both Saudi Arabia and Iran, it could not annoy any one of them.
“We have been in contact with Iran in the recent days and have tried to clarify Pakistan’s position. We have told them, Islamabad was part of any anti-terrorism alliance not an anti-Iran alliance,” said the official.
