Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is at the receiving end of a great deal of criticism for suffering humiliation at the US-Arab-Islamic Summit in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh. While the Pakistani media is giving full vent to its anger at the way the summit unfolded, former cricketer and Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan said “Pakistanis are ashamed at the way Nawaz Sharif was treated in Saudi Arabia”.
A Pakistani daily, The Nation, in a topic titled “Prime Embarrassment!”, directly blamed the Pakistan PM as Sharif failed to get any opportunity to speak at the summit whereas he had “spent nearly two- and-half hours consulting his comrades-in-arms preparing and finalising his speech.” The Pakistan PM wasn’t allowed to speak at the event, even as leaders of some small countries put forward their views on terrorism, said the Pakistani daily.
The Pakistani media is miffed specially because US President Donald Trump mentioned that India was one of the countries which had suffered due to terrorism, ignoring Pakistan’s suffering because of terrorism.
The Nation said that the summit was a disaster for Pakistan because while the country had lost over 70,000 civilians and over 6,000 soldiers to terrorism, Trump did not mention the country even once. “The popular sentiment among the majority of Pakistani media delegation was that of a total humiliation of the sole
Muslim nuclear power because not only there was no mention of Islamabad’s role against global terrorism but also the PM of the ‘frontline state’
was denied the opportunity to put forth its point of view,” it said.
The daily taunted Sharif, “The PM has suffered through the optics of attending a blatantly anti-Iran summit; will he be bold enough to suffer the consequences of making a personal trip to TehranIJ”
Daily Pakistan, another newspaper, said, “leaders, who are not even facing the menace of terrorism, were given chances to present their views, but Pakistan was neglected.”