Bhutto Zardari, 34, ‘wouldn’t have shot up to the very senior post of foreign minister without the military’s blessing’, one analyst notes.
Assad’s return to Arab League and Zelensky’s appearance mark efforts by Arab states to remain diplomatically neutral in the West’s tensions with Russia and China.
The former PM once had Pakistan’s all-powerful military on his side, but all that has changed with a series of mob attacks on security personnel last week linked to his party.
With their ancient cultural and historical sites – plus ‘very good shopping’ – the Gulf monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE have their sights set on enticing a new wave of luxury travellers from China.
Dozens of heavily-armed paramilitary troops took Khan into custody at the Islamabad High Court, where he was appearing in an unrelated case.
Top-secret documents show US detected allegedly suspicious construction activity at a container terminal in an Abu Dhabi port that is part-owned by China.
A brewing constitutional crisis has raised fears that Pakistan’s all-powerful military could now step in, as the practically bankrupt South Asian nation struggles to secure the latest tranche of an all-important bailout.
Pakistani officials moved a jailed Chinese national charged with blasphemy more than 200km away to a maximum-security prison for fear his presence could trigger a mob.
A source involved in the arrest said scores of infuriated Pakistani labourers descended on a Chinese camp, apparently intent on attacking the man, following a heated dispute about the slow pace of work during Ramadan.
Oil-heavy nation aims to capitalise on success as Riyadh-Tehran intermediary, say analysts, and is involved in Yemen peace negotiations and energy deals – some of them green – with Asian partners.
Gulf monarchies have grown tired of feeling insecure and being used as a doormat by their so-called allies in the West, and they have been adapting their policies and marshalling their trillion-dollar resources accordingly.
Three of the UK’s most prominent politicians share not just South Asian roots, but also come from well-off families and are graduates of prestigious private schools.
A landmark US$10 billion deal for a state-of-the-art refining complex in Liaoning province could be just the beginning, analysts say, as Beijing looks to shore up energy security and Riyadh hunts for a ‘win-win’ supply agreement.
Cooking gas and wheat flour have more than doubled in price over the past year, as onions shot up an eye-watering 228 per cent.
Critics say ‘responsible adults’ have to hold back hardline ministers in Israel’s government or renewed violence could dent US efforts to normalise relations in the Middle East.
The Saudi-Emirati relationship is increasingly competitive but there has been nothing to suggest that their common core interests have changed.
Tehran and Riyadh have agreed to restore diplomatic relations following the Beijing-led talks that experts dubbed as ‘a major development in the Middle Eastern diplomacy’.
China’s unexpected US$700 million loan buoyed Pakistan’s central bank foreign exchange reserves up to nearly US$4 billion, which is less than a month’s worth of imports.
Qatar-linked bid aims to elevate the country to ‘position of visibility and legitimacy’, as it seeks to boost ties with Asia, rest of the world.
Internationally, he was often seen as a great statesman; at home, it was a rather different story.
Hopes are rising that the international humanitarian response to the Turkey-Syria earthquake will spur diplomatic reconciliation and improve goodwill between governments.
Both are suffering a severe currency crisis fuelled by unsustainable spending and unaccountable borrowing from lenders that include the IMF and China. But the austerity creditors are calling for has its own consequences.
Political stakes in the long disputed region have been higher than ever since 2019 when New Delhi revoked autonomy to the half of Kashmir it administers.
Oil-rich UAE, Saudi Arabia can make huge green deals in a region politically dominated by Moscow as they are not abandoning their Russia investments or curtailing relations over Ukraine: analyst.
Polls are needed after Khan’s PTI party dissolved two of four provincial assemblies and following mass opposition resignations from the National Assembly.
The world is ‘playing catch-up’ against the ‘fast-approaching deadline’ of 2030 to constrain global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the COP28 president-designate warned.
In a thinly veiled reference to Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, Pakistan’s national security council warned that ‘the full force of the state’ would ‘take on all and any entities that resort to violence’.
Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Riyadh enabled Saudi’s de facto ruler to once again assert Saudi Arabia’s right to make ‘sovereign decisions’, irrespective of the political agenda of its security guarantor the US, analysts said.
As Saudi Arabia fuels speculation that it could host a future Summer Olympics, Qatar is rumoured to be mulling its fourth bid for the Games. But what about those ‘sportswashing’ charges?
The armed group, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan on Monday called off a six-month ceasefire with the Pakistani government and ordered its militants to launch a nationwide campaign of attacks.
