Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday lavished praise on US President Donald Trump at the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace, crediting him with averting a catastrophic war in South Asia and describing him as a “saviour of South Asia.”
“Your bold diplomacy has surely brought calm to many international serious hotspots. Your timely and very effective intervention to achieve ceasefire between India and Pakistan potentially averted loss of tens of millions of people. You have truly proved to be a man of peace.” Mr Sharif said in his address
The remarks came as Mr Trump formally launched the US-created Board of Peace, pledging $10 billion in American funding while asserting the body would “strengthen up the United Nations” and at the same time be “almost looking over” it.
Mr Sharif said Thursday’s session “will be etched in the annals of history,” and told the gathering that through Mr Trump’s “untiring support,” long-lasting peace in Gaza could become the US president’s legacy.
Turning to Gaza, the prime minister said that to achieve durable stability, “ceasefire violations must end,” stressing that sustained calm was essential for reconstruction and a political settlement.
Mr Trump, who has claimed credit for halting last year’s India-Pakistan tensions through economic pressure, repeated in his own remarks a sweeping account of how he claimed to have defused last year’s brief Pakistan-India conflict by threatening to withhold US trade, including an assertion that he floated “200 per cent” tariffs if fighting continued.
President Trump said he was extending his political endorsements beyond the United States to foreign leaders, naming Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif among those he praised at the meeting. He also singled out Chief of Defence Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir, describing him as a “great general, great Field Marshal, great guy.”
The session had started with Mr Trump posing for photographs with world leaders gathered at the venue, including PM Sharif. The American president was flanked by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a member of the organisation’s executive board.
The Board’s Gaza mandate, its proposed security force, and Trump’s expansive language about supervising the UN place Pakistan inside a new US-built diplomatic structure whose legal footing, funding pipeline, and long-term remit remain contested among allies and international officials.
Trump sought to swat away criticism that he is building a rival to the UN, saying the Board would “strengthen” the organisation. But in the same breath, he cast the Board as an overseer, saying it would “almost be looking over” the United Nations to ensure it “runs properly.”
That formulation is politically combustible for a country that has historically wrapped its foreign policy and peacekeeping identity in the language of UN legitimacy. The UN Charter, signed in San Francisco in 1945, contains no provision for an external supervisory body that can “look over” the organisation.
Trump also announced that the United States would contribute $10 billion to the Board, offering no details on where the funds would come from or whether the administration has sought congressional appropriation, a step required for such spending.
He said nine members had committed $7bn for Gaza reconstruction. The donor list he read out included Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Kuwait. According to analysts, the amount, while substantial, is only a fraction of the estimated cost of rebuilding Gaza, devastated after two years of war. The meeting also revisited the central political hurdle: reconstruction money is being tied to the demilitarisation of Hamas – an objective still far from assured.
Maj Gen Jasper Jeffers, head of the newly created International Stabilisation Force, said plans call for 12,000 police officers and 20,000 soldiers to be deployed in Gaza. He said the initial deployment would focus on Rafah. Countries named as contributing personnel included Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania. Egypt and Jordan would assist in police training. Interestingly, and in a befitting reply to roaring concerns at home, Pakistan was not a part of the list of countries announced to be contributing personnel deployment.
PM Sharif arrived in Washington with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar and Special Assistant Tariq Fatemi, as part of an official visit framed by the Prime Minister’s Office as reflecting Pakistan’s inclusion in the Board and its “effective role” in promoting global peace.
According to Mosharraf Zaidi, Prime Minister’s spokesperson for foreign media, “Pakistan joined the Board of Peace as part of its almost eight decades-long support for the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people.”
“This begins and ends with the establishment of a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders and Al Quds Al Sharif as its capital, he emphasised.
Trump, for his part, treated the gathering as a stage not only for Gaza but also for broader geopolitical messaging. He told the room the Board’s work was “very simple – peace” and called it one of the most “consequential” undertakings of his presidency, repeatedly praising leaders who travelled to Washington and suggesting others would eventually fall in line.
The sharpest edge of Thursday’s meeting, however, came when Trump pivoted to Iran. He again demanded a deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme and warned that failure would bring consequences, at one point indicating the world would “find out” within roughly 10 days.
Sources in Washington claim that the Pentagon is already sending a slew of weaponry to the Middle East, including but not restricted to additional warships, air defences, and submarines, as if in preparation for a possible military strike on Iran.
More than 40 countries and the European Union were represented at the meeting, though several states – including Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom – participated as observers.
Mr Trump predicted wider participation. “Almost everybody’s accepted, and the ones that haven’t, will be,” he said. “Some are playing a little cute – it doesn’t work. You can’t play cute with me.”
According to diplomatic sources, that split matters for Pakistan because it shapes the narrative of who is underwriting Trump’s new architecture and who is keeping their distance. When major Western allies step back, the burden of “representativeness” shifts toward the states that did join, particularly Muslim-majority participants asked to lend political cover to a postwar Gaza design that still lacks a settled answer to the most basic question: who governs.
More worryingly for the future governance, the Board includes Israel, but Palestinians are not represented as principals–a fact that continues to fuel scepticism even among states willing to engage.
The immediate question for Islamabad, going by widespread discussions on social media, is whether participation remains largely diplomatic – a way to argue for ceasefire consolidation and humanitarian relief – or whether the Board’s evolution begins to demand operational commitments that Pakistan may not be able to sell at home.
What is already clear is that Trump has designed the Board to be more than a Gaza mechanism. By the end of its first leader-level session, it had become a platform for presidential power projection – on the UN, on allied capitals, and on Iran – with Pakistan visibly in the frame.
Pakistan’s foreign office says the prime minister will also meet senior US leadership and other heads of government on the sidelines.
Well-positioned sources had already hinted at efforts underway to secure a one-on-one meeting at the White House. However, as of now, the Hill wants the focus to remain razor-sharp on Gaza.