ISTANBUL: Pakistan withdraw from Kuala Lumpur Summit under Saudi pressure as Saudi rulers issued economic threats, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “Saudi Arabia pressured Pakistan into withdrawing from the four-day Kuala Lumpur Summit,” Turkish president was quoted as saying by Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah.
Turkish president said Saudi Arabia threatened Pakistan that the kingdom would recruit people from Bangladesh for jobs and 4 million Pakistanis would be sent back to their country.
President Erdogan said due to its economic difficulties, Pakistan had to obey such threats.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi confirmed on December 18 that Pakistan wasn’t attending the summit because Saudi Arabia and the UAE had “concerns” about the event. However, the Foreign Office of Pakistan said the country would continue to work for the unity and solidarity of the Muslim world.
“Pakistan did not participate in the KL Summit as time and efforts were needed to address the concerns of major Muslims countries regarding possible division in the Ummah,” it said in a statement.
The four-day conference, which held in Kuala Lumpur to address some of the Islamic world’s thorniest issues, was boycotted by a handful of countries including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Saudi Arabia said its leaders were not attending the summit because it was being held outside the aegis of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation based in Jeddah.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who along with his Malaysian counterpart and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan had been a prime mover behind the summit, made a last-minute decision to withdraw from the meeting.
But, speaking to reporters in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, Erdogan claimed that Saudi Arabia had threatened Pakistan with economic consequences to coerce it into skipping the moot.
“Unfortunately, we see that Saudi Arabia pressures Pakistan,” Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah quoted Erdogan as saying.
“Now, there are promises that the country has given to Pakistan regarding the central bank. However, more than that, there are 4 million Pakistanis working in Saudi Arabia. They (threaten by saying that they) would send (Pakistanis) back and re-employ Bangladeshi people instead,” Erdogan was quoted as saying.
The Turkish president added that the Saudi kingdom has used similar threatening tactics regarding State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), threatening that they would withdraw their money.
The Pakistani central bank received its third and last $1 billion tranche in January this year as part of a balance-of-payments support program from Riyadh.
Erdogan claimed that Pakistan had to obey such threats from Riyadh due to the economic difficulties being faced by the country.
He also implied that Indonesia, which also skipped the Malaysia moot, was also suffering from similar problems, and added that he would have liked to have seen both countries present as well.
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