Pakistan-Saudi defense pact resembles NATO alliance: Islamabad
Pakistan has likened its recent unprecedented defense agreement with Saudi Arabia to the one that exists among the Western military alliance of NATO’s member states.
“It’s kind of like many other defensive [pacts] and I think the best way of looking at it is to look at NATO,” Pakistani government spokesperson Musadik Malik told the Saudi state-owned Al Arabiya news channel in remarks that were broadcast on Saturday.
The two sides signed the “Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement” during a meeting between Pakistan’s visiting Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on Wednesday, calling the pact a “landmark strategic deal.”
New Saudi-Pakistan pact vows joint response to any aggression: Reporthttps://t.co/MiQ5V2o6uK
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It pledged to treat any act of aggression against one country as an attack on both that necessitates collective retaliation.
Commenting on the feature following the deal’s conclusion, Pakistani outlet Business Recorder said, in line with the deal, “any aggression against either Pakistan or Saudi Arabia will be treated as an aggression against both states.” Accordingly, such act of aggression would “enhance joint deterrence capabilities.”
‘Not an aggressive treaty’
Musadik said the deal “is not an aggressive treaty. It doesn’t invite for attacking anyone, but if any of the countries in the NATO framework are attacked, it would be deemed as if all of them have been attacked.”
The deal’s conclusion followed deadly Israeli airstrikes against the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas’ leadership in the Qatari capital.
The attacks took place amid Hamas’ ongoing cooperation with Doha’s mediatory efforts towards realization of an end to the Israeli regime’s October 2023-present war of genocide on the Gaza Strip.
The attacks were uniformly condemned by an emergency Arab-Islamic summit that took place in the city to address the aggression and its aftermath.
Press TV's @AbubakerAbedW says the airstrikes in Doha were a coordinated US-Israeli attack that sends a clear message: Israel does NOT want a deal! pic.twitter.com/ZMQsti5CVJ
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‘Tacit commitment-turned-formalized deal’
The spokesman, meanwhile, framed the deal as a token of, what he called, the two sides’ long-standing tacit commitment to each other that had now been formalized in the form of a treaty.
“We’ve had this relationship, or tacit understanding, for several decades, or frankly, forever,” he said. “It’s just that now we have [formalized] it in the form of a treaty.”
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