PR No.148 Davos: January 18, 2017

Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif met the President of Swiss Confederation Doris Leuthard here at Davos, Switzerland toady.

The Swiss President stated that despite different challenges faced by Pakistan, we’re happy to see great progress in its economy.

“Pakistan is progressing on the right track and we appreciate your economic roadmap”, stated the Swiss President.

“We acknowledge and appreciate efforts of your government to promote stability in Pakistan and the region”, remarked the President of Swiss Confederation. The Swiss companies are more than willing to work in Pakistan’s positive and enabling environment. “We’re very keen to work with your government in different hydropower projects’’, she stated.

Pakistan has played a great role by giving refuge to three million Afghan refugees on its soil, and we hope Pakistan will continue to play its role in promoting good relationship with Afghanistan”, added the Swiss President.

The Prime Minister appreciated the efforts of the Swiss-Asian Chamber of Commerce, Swiss Global Enterprise (SGE) and Swiss Business Council (SBC) for introducing Pakistan to the Swiss business houses, especially the Swiss SMEs.

The Prime Minsiter thanked the Swiss government for offering postgraduate scholarships to students from Pakistan at various public universities in Switzerland. The PM complimented the Switzerland’s objective, non-discriminatory and criteria-based approach on NSG membership.

‘’I hope that as part of the NSG troika, Switzerland would continue to maintain this principled stand, especially when it takes over the Chair of the group later this year (other members of the troika are South Korea and Argentina)’’, added the PM.

The PM assured that Pakistan is committed to facilitate and support an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation process as envisaged under the Quadrilateral framework. ‘’Pakistan believes that security of Pakistan is directly linked to peace and stability in Afghanistan. Pakistan has continued to host millions of Afghan refugees for more than three decades. We are still hosting around 1.5 million refugees and about an equal number of undocumented Afghans’’, added the PM. The PM reaffirmed that Pakistan believes that there is a need to create necessary pull-factors inside Afghanistan for sustained repatriation of Afghan refugees.

Pakistan wants peaceful and amicable resolution of all outstanding issues with India. Pakistan is concerned at the recent developments in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir and the gross human rights violations by Indian Occupation Forces, particularly in the wake of extrajudicial murder of Burhan Wani. International Community should take notice of the gravity of the situation and call on India to respect human rights of the people of Kashmir and implement the UN Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir.

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