Islamabad: Pakistan’s top leadership will decide on the deployment of troops as part of the peacekeeping force of the Muslim nations in Gaza under the recently announced peace deal to end the bloodshed in the region, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on Tuesday.
Dar addressed a press conference where he was asked if Pakistan would send troops to Gaza under the peace plan announced by President Donald Trump on Monday.
He talked at length about the effort to bring a ceasefire and ultimate peace in Gaza, including the preparatory meeting of leaders of eight Muslim countries with President Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York last week.
“The idea is to have an independent Palestinian government of technocrats there. It will be overseen by an international oversight body, which, too, will mostly comprise Palestinians…,” he said.
“The force [here] is a peacekeeping force. On the ground, there will be Palestinian law-enforcement agencies…there will be [separate] forces supporting them. Indonesia has offered 20,000 troops for that. I am sure Pakistan’s leadership will also be making a decision on this,” he said.
“We have asked them to document the arrangement, whatever it is, at the [UN] Security Council,” he added.
Giving some details of the meeting with Trump, he said the objectives were to try for a ceasefire in Gaza, make arrangements for sending humanitarian aid, stop the forced displacement of Palestinians and make arrangements for the return of the displaced Gazans.
He said that the Muslim leader also wanted to have a plan for Gaza’s reconstruction and to stop Israel’s attempts to annex the West Bank.
“When these objectives were conveyed to him (Trump) and he was asked to work with us on achieving them,” Dar said, adding that the US president then proposed that his team would devise a “workable solution” with the foreign ministers of the eight Muslim countries that were part of the meeting.
But he stopped short of providing any further details, saying that it was decided to keep the details as “classified”.
Dar also said he had received messages from the Saudi foreign minister about the peace plan for ending the bloodshed.
“He told me that five countries had reached a consensus on a joint statement [regarding the Gaza plan] and that our agreement was needed on this matter as well, and that they had also reached out to Indonesia and the UAE.
“I then consulted the foreign secretary and proposed some changes. I spoke to the Saudi foreign minister again…as I had some objections…He then sent me a revised version…and the joint statement was released,” Dar added.
Dar said that the Palestinian Authority also welcomed the statement while acknowledging that some people had some reservations and were criticising it.
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