Strengthening Ties With Qatar.

Pakistan enjoys very brotherly, warm, and friendly relations with members of the Islamic Ummah, particularly with Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar besides having cordial friendly relations with other countries around the globe. With regards to Qatar, Pakistan has always enjoyed excellent relations with this fraternal country on a commonality of religion, culture, values, and traditions. These relations were duly highlighted when Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif recently paid a two-day official visit to Qatar at the invitation of Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and reflected in all engagements and activities of the Pakistani leader there.

During his two-day visit, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had a very productive meeting with the Emir of Qatar, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Qatar Investment Authority, and visited FIFA World Cup Stadium 974 in Doha and gave a briefing about preparations being made for hosting the FIFA World Cup 2022. During the upcoming world cup sporting event in the world, football manufactured in Sialkot, Pakistan, is to be used officially throughout. It is also worth mentioning here that Pakistan Army will be assisting Qatar in the maintenance of security of the major sporting event.

The relations between the two brotherly countries have over the years seen a steady and positive trajectory, the two countries now want to transform these historical and fraternal bilateral relations into a more robust strategic relationship through the enhancement of economic cooperation in diverse fields of mutual interest. Over the years Qatar has been extending multi-field support to Pakistan in an unrelenting manner. Both countries have a rich history of cooperation in the bilateral domain as well as on multilateral forums, ties between Pakistan and Qatar were rooted deeply in the shared faith, mutual understanding, and convergence of interests.

Both the brotherly countries' relationship is based on mutual trust and shared goal of achieving prosperity for their people, have had excellent cooperation in various fields including energy, manpower export and people to people linkages in the past and quite obviously there is great potential as well as opportunities for transformation of these into more robust partnership by exploring new ventures of cooperation in sectors like renewable energy, food security, industrial and infrastructure development and hospitality.

With Pakistan still reeling...