Washington: Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, accompanied by Field Marshal Asim Munir, arrived at Oval Office on Thursday to meet President Trump, who earlier announced ‘We have a great leader coming’ referring to Sharif, NDTV reported.
Earlier the US and Pakistan struck a trade deal, suggesting more bilateral ties between two nations after a long drawn meltdown in relations.
Sharif and Munir arrived at the White House around 4.52 pm when Trump was speaking to reporters after signing several executive orders; they were greeted by senior administration officials.
Trump and Sharif met briefly at the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday on the sidelines of a multilateral meeting that Trump had with leaders from Arab and other nations including Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also present at Trump’s Thursday’s meeting with Sharif and Munir.
‘We have a great leader coming, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, and the Field Marshal. Field Marshal is a very great guy, and so is the Prime Minister, both, and they're coming, and they may be in this room right now,’ Trump told reporters.
Pakistani PM's motorcade left the White House around 6.18 pm with news agency ANI reporting Pakistani leaders had to wait nearly an hour to meet Trump.
Washington’s relation with Pakistan, a strategic security partner in South Asia, collapsed especially after American forces found Osama bin Laden living in Abbottabad with Trump announcing in 2018 that Pakistan had given the US ‘nothing but lies and deceit’.
‘We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting...It is time for Pakistan to demonstrate its commitment to civilisation, order, and to peace’, Trump reportedly said.
Now the US is eying Pakistan’s critical minerals and rare earth resources with a US firm reportedly investing $500m in Pakistani minerals, alongside Trump vowed to help develop Pakistan's ‘massive oil reserves’.
A trade agreement between two countries has been made after entailing a 19 per cent tariff on Pakistani imports, while the US offering to develop Pakistan’s oil reserves.