ISLAMABAD
\nPrime Minister Imran Khan \u201cdid the right thing\u201d by going ahead with his Russia visit, the Pakistani foreign minister said on Friday, dispelling the notion the visit was ill-timed in view of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
\nDuring his recent official visit to Russia, Prime Minister Khan held talks with President Vladimir Putin on wide-ranging issues and discussed bilateral relations between Pakistan and Russia. While the Pakistani premier was in Russia, Putin asked Ukrainian armed forces to lay down arms in a televised address before ordering his troops to launch an invasion by land, air and sea on Thursday.
\nOn Friday, Pakistan\u2019s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said PM Khan met with Pakistani officials and even former diplomats, who had served in Russia, to take their input prior to the Moscow visit, Arab News reported.
\n\u201cWe decided to continue with the tour to maximize Pakistan\u2019s diplomatic space,\u201d Qureshi said at a press conference on Friday. \u201cI am completely convinced now after the visit that we did the right thing by going ahead.\u201d Pakistani officials also remained in touch with the United States (US) regarding the visit, according to the Pakistani foreign minister.
\nA senior US official contacted Islamabad and they were informed that \u201cPakistan was not part of any superpower club\u201d or bloc, Qureshi said. \u201cWe are not part of any camp politics and neither we have this policy to become part of any particular camp. We have suffered a lot due to this in the past,\u201d the foreign minister said.
\n\u201cWe have shifted our policy from geopolitics to geo-economics. We will have good relations with all.\u201d
\nFor geo-economics, he said, a natural conclusion for this was to make progress on regional connectivity, Afghanistan and beyond Afghanistan, into the Central Asian republics.
\n\u201cThen Russia has an historical role in this region,\u201d he said. \u201cRussia being onboard will fortify our focus towards geo-economic regional connectivity.\u201d
\nResponding to a question about Pakistanis stranded in Ukraine, the foreign minister said it was the government\u2019s priority to ensure their safe and secure evacuation. No Pakistani has died in the conflict so far and reports suggesting otherwise were all rumors, he said.
\n\u201cWe are in contact with our embassy and I talked to them on the telephone,\u201d Qureshi said. \u201cThey were given clear instructions before the trip to Moscow and asked to ensure the safety of Pakistani diaspora.\u201d
\nAround 3,000 Pakistanis were currently there in Ukraine, according to the Pakistani foreign minister. \u201cWe have shifted the embassy to Ternopil which is close to the Polish border and trying to shift Pakistani students there,\u201d he said. \u201cIt would be easy to evacuate to Poland from there and then further to Pakistan.\u201d
\nAmbassador Khokhar has been quoted saying all Pakistani nationals in Ukraine were safe and the embassy was working on their evacuation. \u201cOn our advice, many Pakistanis had already left the country,\u201d he said. \u201cOnly a few students are left behind and we are making arrangements for their safe and secure evacuation from Ukraine.\u201d
\n\u201cWe have asked all students who could not go out of Ukraine to gather at a safe place in Ternopil city [in the western part of the country] and our counselor assistant is also in contact with them,\u201d the envoy added. \u201cWe will then work things out from there after assessing the situation.\u201d
\nPakistani students, however, said they had been asked by their university officials to leave their apartments and move to underground metro stations to ensure their safety. \u201cWe were living in our apartments but received instructions from our university administration to shift to metro stations,\u201d Maas Hassan, who is enrolled in Kharkiv National Medical University in the Ukraine\u2019s northeast, said.
\n\u201cNo one is listening to us and we appeal to the Pakistani government and Prime Minister Imran Khan to arrange our evacuation on priority.\u201d \u201cWe are around 700 Pakistani students in Kharkiv and about 15 have returned to their country,\u201d Ali Hamza, a first-year medical student from Jhang, said. \u201cAll others are still stranded here.\u201d A Pakistani student Munam Khan said the embassy was not cooperating with the students. \u201cOur embassy is not cooperating with us at all,\u201d he told Arab News. \u201cA few weeks ago, they told us they would arrange special PIA flights for us if the war broke out, but nothing is being done now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD Prime Minister Imran Khan \u201cdid the right thing\u201d by going ahead with his Russia visit, the Pakistani foreign minister said on Friday, dispelling the notion the visit was ill-timed in view of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. During his recent official visit to Russia, Prime Minister Khan held talks with President Vladimir Putin on wide-ranging issues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187968,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[812,4468,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-246496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-news","8":"tag-fm-qureshi","9":"tag-right-thing","10":"tag-russia"},"yoast_head":"\n