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- US President Donald Trump met Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the Oval Office on Thursday
- Pakistan's Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir accompanied Sharif for the White House meeting
- The meeting followed a new trade deal and a brief encounter at the UN General Assembly
Did our AI summary help? Let us know. Switch To Beeps Mode Washington: US President Donald Trump met Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the Oval Office on Thursday. Pakistan's Army Chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, who was hosted by Trump for lunch at the White House early this summer, accompanied Sharif for the meeting, which was also attended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Before the meeting, the US leader called the visitors "great leaders", a sign of thaw in US-Pakistan ties.
"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 said, speaking to reporters.
The meeting followed a trade deal between the US and Pakistan and came shortly after Trump and Sharif very briefly met at the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, when the US president held a multilateral meeting with leaders from Arab nations and others, including Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye.
Sharif arrived at the White House around 4.52 pm and was greeted by senior administration officials. Trump signed several executive orders and was speaking to reporters when Sharif and Munir arrived at the White House.
The Pakistani PM's motorcade was seen leaving the White House around 6.18 pm, according to the White House pool.
News agency ANI reported the two Pakistani leaders had to wait for nearly an hour to meet Trump, a claim NDTV could not independently verify.
Thaw In US-Pak Ties
The US, traditionally, viewed Pakistan primarily as a strategic security partner in South Asia, first during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and then again during the so-called “war on terror”. That relationship collapsed over time, with growing evidence of Pakistan supporting terrorism, especially after American forces found Osama bin Laden living in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Trump has himself called Islamabad duplicitous and couldn't be trusted.
But now Pakistan has something new to offer the US, and a glimpse of it was seen in a high-profile signing ceremony at Sharif's residence earlier this month. On September 8, senior officials from Islamabad and Pakistan signed two memorandums of understanding (MoUs) in the presence of Sharif and Munir.
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