After lunch with Donald Trump, Pak Army chief joins Shehbaz Sharif in meetings with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in China

New Delhi: Pakistan Army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, on Tuesday joined the country’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin – two-and-a-half months after United States President Donald Trump had hosted him at the White House and lauded him for helping avert a nuclear war with India.

Munir, whom New Delhi accused of provoking the April 22 carnage in Jammu and Kashmir, not only sat next to Sharif during the meeting with Xi in the Great Hall in Beijing but also joined the Pakistani prime minister in posing for a photograph with the president of China.

Xi had parleys with Sharif and Munir, two days after having a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Tianjin in northern China.

Like Modi, Sharif also attended the summit of the 10-nation bloc, led by China and Russia and often perceived as a counterweight to NATO.

Sharif and Munir are likely to join the several other foreign leaders in witnessing the military parade to be held in Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in China’s war of resistance against aggression by Japan and the “World Anti-Fascist War” (WW II).

“China and Pakistan are friends who have shared adversity and are brothers, but more importantly, they are friends based on trust and moral integrity. Their ironclad friendship has grown stronger over time, forged through the trials of history,” Xi told Sharif. He said that China was willing to work with Pakistan to build an upgraded version of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor 2.0 and work out an upgraded version of the China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement.

New Delhi opposes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as it passes through India’s areas in J&K under illegal occupation of Pakistan.

“No force can shake this unbreakable Pakistan-China friendship,” Sharif told Xi.

Munir had called Kashmir “a jugular vein” of Pakistan on April 16. In a speech at the Overseas Convention of Pakistanis in Islamabad, he had not only defended the “two-nation theory”, which had led to the partition of India and creation of Pakistan in 1947, but had also said that the Muslims should make their children understand their difference from the Hindus. New Delhi later alleged that his speech, full of communal rhetoric, had provoked the terrorists to go on a killing spree in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22. He was elevated to the rank of Field Marshal by Sharif's government in Islamabad after the May 7-10 cross-border military flare-up between India and Pakistan.

Trump, himself, hosted Munir at the White House on June 19.

Munir again visited the US last month when he not only boasted of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal but also threatened to destroy the dams to be built by India on the river Indus.

The Pakistan Army chief had earlier visited Beijing on July 24 and met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. He also had a meeting with Wang in Islamabad on August 21, when the Chinese Foreign Minister had visited Islamabad.

Munir on Tuesday also accompanied Sharif in the meeting with Putin.

“Notably, Pakistan remains our traditional partner in Asia. We value our relations. I would like to point out that during our previous meeting, we agreed to step up our relations, and indeed, some progress has been made,” Putin told Sharif. “However, unfortunately, due to a number of objective circumstances, our trade is down, albeit by a very small margin. Nevertheless, this is a telling sign for us to address this matter and to work on it.”

“We respect your relationship with India – that is perfectly fine – but we also want to build very strong relations, and these relations will be supplementary and complementary for the good, and for the progress and prosperity of the region,” Sharif told Putin, who had a meeting with Modi on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Tianjin on Monday.