Pakistan and China to work together on Afghanistan, Ukraine

Islamabad, Mar 21 (EFE).- China’s foreign minister said here Monday that his country and Pakistan are committed to cooperating more closely on regional and international issues such as Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Pakistan and China “will practice a genuine multilateralism and will safeguard the basic norms of international relations, will oppose power politics and unilateral sanctions, and will promote international law in a more just direction,” Wang Yi said in Islamabad.

The two governments will intensify “coordination in regional and international matters,” he said at a joint press conference with Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

Wang traveled to Pakistan’s capital for the two-day Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) foreign ministers conference, which begins Tuesday.

Though China has a significant Muslim population, it is not an OIC member-state, and Wang will be taking part in the meeting at the invitation of Pakistan.

He will become the first Chinese government minister to address an OIC gathering.

“The special guest is the prerogative of the host country and China is probably the only important country that has good economic and political relations with the countries of the OIC,” Pakistani former Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry told Efe.

Wang said that his presence at the conference “fully demonstrates the strong desire of China and the Islamic countries to deepen cooperation.”

Qureshi said that one of the topics he discussed with Wang was the possibility of extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan.

The OIC is the world’s second-largest intergovernmental body after the United Nations, with 57 members across four continents accounting for 23 percent of the global population. EFE aa-igr/dr