Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar convened a National Security Committee (NSC) meeting on Friday after announcing that he would be cutting short his visit to Davos for the 54th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) amidst cross-border intrusions and heightened regional tensions between Pakistan and Iran.
The meeting will be attended by the interim government’s cabinet members, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, and all three service chiefs.
Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani, who led the Pakistan team to the Non-Aligned Movement’s Ministerial Meeting in Kampala, Uganda, will also return shortly.
The decision comes after Pakistan launched ‘highly coordinated’ and ‘precise strikes’ on terrorist hideouts in Iran’s Sistan-o-Balochistan province.
The counterattack came more than a day after Iran launched missile and drone strikes in Pakistan’s Panjgur. The strikes began the same day Kakar met with the Iranian foreign minister on the sidelines of the WEF in Davos, Switzerland.
FM Jilani also received a phone call from Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian.
The foreign minister emphasized that Iran’s strike on Pakistani land on January 16 was not only a major infringement of Pakistan’s sovereignty, but also an egregious violation of international law and the spirit of bilateral relations between Pakistan and Iran.
The foreign minister expressed Pakistan’s unequivocal condemnation of the attack and noted that the incident has major consequences for bilateral relations between Pakistan and Iran. The foreign minister underlined that Pakistan reserves the right to respond to this provocative move.
