Makkah pact purely defensive, says ISPR

Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry has said that the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye has no regional aspirations and that it is purely defensive in nature, with the aim of ensuring collective deterrence. Speaking to Al-Arabiya English during a special interview, the chief military spokesperson said that the agreement was based on collective deterrence and had "no offensive, no interference, no aggressive element" and was purely defensive in nature. "There is nothing aggressive. There are no regional aspirations. It is a collective deterrence and it is complementary because all these countries have independent relations with other alliances, other countries, other blocks," he said. He said that the mutual defence agreement was complementary in nature and did not compete with any other. When asked how Pakistan would respond if any one of the partners came under attack, Chaudhry said the operationalisation of the defensive commitments had never been made public in any discourse. He said the three countries would decide how to respond, adding that they would decide the course of action and actualise it accordingly. Asked whether the latest agreement would compete or complement Pakistan's decades-long "iron-clad" relationship with Beijing, Chaudhry categorically described it as a complementary relationship. He said Pakistan's relationships with both Saudi Arabia and Turkiye had not "come out of the blue", adding that China and the world understood how historic and deeply rooted these relations were and that Pakistan was formalising them. "Nobody has any problem with that, everyone understands that this is defensive, everyone understands it is for maintaining stability and peace in the region," he said, adding that the countries that had joined the agreement enjoyed wonderful relationships with China. Rejecting the notion that Pakistan was competing with any country through the agreement, the spokesperson said Pakistan believed in solidifying engagement with its partners and friends. He also rebuffed the idea of calling it a "Muslim strategic alliance", saying it was a regional stability alliance. "It's not a club that has been made for Muslim countries only," he said, adding that it was up to the leadership of the three countries to decide how and when to expand the alliance. "This agreement, this alliance, always encompass new willing partners who also believe in regional peace, stability and security, who have shared vision of non-aggression, non-interference and collective deterrence," he added.