Air strikes: Pak expresses reservation about OIC's invitation to India

February 26, 2019 22:53

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Tuesday that he has spoken to his UAE counterpart and "expressed reservations" about invitation to India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to attend the OIC meeting scheduled later this week.

In a strategically significant development, India has been invited to the inaugural plenary of the foreign ministers' conclave of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a powerful grouping of Muslim majority nations, in Abu Dhabi from March 1 to 2. Swaraj will attend the meeting as the 'guest of honour'.

Addressing a press conference here after a special meeting of the National Security Committee in the wake of India's air strikes inside Pakistan early Tuesday, Qureshi said the situation has changed now.

"Aggression has been done against a founding member of the OIC," he said, referring to the Indian attack that destroyed Jaish-e-Mohammed's biggest training camp in Balakot in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing a "very large number" of terrorists, trainers and commanders.

Qureshi said that he has spoken to the foreign minister of the UAE and expressed Pakistan's reservations for inviting the Indian foreign minister as chief of guest in the OIC meeting.

The OIC is a grouping of 57 countries, majority of which are Muslim majority. It has usually been supportive of Pakistan and, often sided with Islamabad on the Kashmir issue.

-- PTI

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