PM Shehbaz to visit Iran, Turkiye from July 3-5, FO confirms

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will visit Iran and Turkiye from July 3 to July 5, Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi confirmed on Thursday.

Addressing a weekly briefing, Andrabi said that during his visit to Iran, the premier would participate in the funeral of late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated in US-Israeli strikes on February 28.

The FO spokesperson said PM Shehbaz will travel to Iran first for Khamenei’s funeral. Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, cabinet members and senior officials will accompany the premier on his visit.

“The prime minister will convey condolences on behalf of the people and government of Pakistan to the Iranian leadership and the bereaved families while reaffirming solidarity with the brotherly nation in their hour of profound grief,” he said.

PM Shehbaz will then visit Istanbul at the invitation of Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Andrabi said.

He added that the premier will “hold discussions on the entire gamut of bilateral relations with a special focus on giving impetus to bilateral trade and investment cooperation between the two brotherly countries”.

“The leadership meeting will also reflect on issues concerning regional peace and security.”

The prime minister will also address a business conference hosted by Pakistan to “spotlight Pakistan’s trade and investment potential in priority areas, including SEZs (special economic zones), energy, trade, IT and privatisation sectors”, Andrabi said.

He noted that the conference would bring together leading Turkish businessmen and investors alongside senior officials, dignitaries and other distinguished participants from the business community.

The FO spokesperson highlighted that PM Shehbaz’s visits to Iran and Turkiye “reflect Pakistan’s deep-rooted, historic, cultural and fraternal ties with the two brotherly nations”.

Speaking about the US-Iran war, Andrabi noted that Islamabad has “stepped up its diplomatic engagement with key regional and international stakeholders as well as the principal interlocutors to facilitate earnest follow-up and implementation” of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding signed between the warring parties on June 18.

Under the 14-point accord, Washington and Tehran agreed on a framework to end the war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and negotiate on key issues within 60 days of the signing.

Andrabi highlighted that “positive progress [was] made on issues related to the different aspects of the Islamabad MoU” during the US-Iran talks held in Doha on Tuesday, which continued into the morning.

The spokesperson affirmed that Pakistan will “continue to play a facilitative and mediatory role in the negotiation process along with our Qatari partners”.

He recalled that in that regard, Dar also continued with “high-level consultations” as he spoke to several counterparts on the phone in recent days.

Water is ‘not a tool of coercion’

During his briefing, the FO spokesperson also assailed India’s attempt to treat the Indus river system as a “strategic asset that can be controlled”.

Andrabi declared that Pakistan rejected “India’s attempt to invoke baseless allegations of terrorism as a pretext for placing the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance and obstructing the lawful flow of the Pakistani shares” of the waters.

“Let this be very clear: the real issue is not terrorism. The real issue is the growing disposition within the indian leadership to treat a shared international river system as a strategic asset that can be controlled, withheld or diverted at will,” he asserted.

“This mindset of unilateral appropriation is fundamentally incompatible with the letter and spirit of not just the international law but also the IWT,” Andrabi said.

Maintaining that water was “not a tool of coercion or political pressure”, he warned that any attempt to deny Pakistan its legitimate share of the Indus waters constituted a clear violation of the international legal obligations undertaken by India and “undermined India’s credibility of its commitment to a treaty-based relationship”.

He noted that a summit, titled “International Seminar on Indus Waters Treaty: An Instrument of Peace and Regional Stability”, was held in Islamabad on Tuesday, where participants called for upholding the IWT and “rejected weaponisation of water”.

Speakers, including Deputy PM Dar and international scholars, urged settling disputes through legal and diplomatic mechanisms rather than unilateral actions, Andrabi said.

“They warned that any attempt to deprive the country of its shared water would have profound consequences for regional peace and security,” he added.

The FO official mentioned Dar pointing out that the six-decade-old IWT could not be suspended or terminated under any pretext and that the abeyance was “illegal, unilateral and without any basis”.

Andrabi also gave a firm response to a query about whether the summit could prevent Pakistan from being “converted into barren land”: “No country can do that. Not India, not any other country has the power to do that.”

Andrabi was also asked about Islamabad’s response to a recent letter written to the Pakistani and Indian premiers calling for steps to restore peace and dialogue between the neighbours.

Former ambassador Ashraf Jehangir Qazi and senior politician Farhatullah Babar were among the signatories from Pakistan, while those on the Indian side included Dr Farooq Abdullah, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mehbooba Mufti.

The FO spokesperson said that while the “private individuals are fully competent to write anything”, the Pakistani government or FO “neither endorse nor reject” it and did not have any particular comment on the matter.

On a discrepancy pointed out in the list of prisoners exchanged between Islamabad and New Delhi this week, Andrabi said the list handed over to India of 753 Pakistani prisoners in its custody was “meticulously compiled” and considered to be authentic.

India, however, had shared a list of 439 prisoners who were “Pakistani or believed to be Pakistani”.

Andrabi stressed that Pakistan’s list documented “all reported cases of Pakistani nationals detained in India, including those identified through newspaper reports, notifications from families and information received from official channels”.

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