Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar, concluded her 3-day visit (14-17 June 2022) to Germany on Friday.

During the visit, the Minister led Pakistan’s delegation to the plenary meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), held in Berlin. She also held meeting with her German counterpart Tobias Lindner; German Parliamentary Secretary of State for Economic Cooperation and Development,  Niels Annen; and Member of the German Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Juergen Cosse.

The Minister of State also held an interactive session with a diverse group of local journalists, representatives from think-tanks, media houses, former diplomats and academicians at an event arranged by the Mission in collaboration with the Federal Association of Economic Development & Foreign Trade and Korrespondenten Café. She also interacted with journalists from Deutsche Welle (DW), Die Welt, and other local media outlets.

On 16 June 2022, Secretary Tobias Lindner warmly received MoS Khar at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and congratulated her on assumption of office. Both sides expressed the desire to further augment bilateral ties in all areas, in particular Climate Change, Green Energy, and Labour Mobility. The Minister of State stressed the need to enhance bilateral cooperation on Labour mobility and Technical & Vocational Training sectors.

Terming Pakistan as an important partner in the region, Lindner acknowledged Pakistan’s positive role in facilitating evacuations from Afghanistan. The Minister of State assured that Pakistan would continue to extend all possible assistance in this regard. She underscored the importance of continued humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan, with a view to averting economic implosion. She added that preventing economic meltdown in Afghanistan was imperative for achieving shared and common expectations of the international community towards promotion and protection of fundamental human rights.

Discussing the regional situation, MoS Khar drew attention to the gross and continued human rights violations by India in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. On Ukraine, she underscored the need to immediately end the conflict to prevent loss of life, and finding solution through dialogue and diplomacy. Highlighting three planes-load of relief assistance dispatched by Pakistan to Ukraine, the Minister of State underscored the importance of humanitarian assistance to the affected people.

In her meeting with Neils Annen at the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Minister of State appreciated Germany’s role as one of the major development partners of Pakistan. Mentioning that Pakistan was one of the most affected countries from climate change, she called for strengthening bilateral cooperation in the sectors of renewable energy and climate change mitigation. MoS Khar emphasised the need to be focused in bilateral cooperation.

In this regard, she added that Pakistan and Germany had complete alignment of interest on “clean energy” and that both sides could work towards win-win collaboration in this field. Both Ministers agreed that Climate Change, particularly cooperation and collaboration on clean energy, should be among the priorities in economic engagement and policy dialogue.

With Juergen Cosse, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the Bundestag (Parliament), the Minister of State discussed bilateral parliamentary cooperation, as well as regional and global issues of mutual interest. Terming the EU’s GSP plus facility, a mutually beneficial arrangement for both Pakistan and the EU, Ms. Khar underscored the importance of its continuation beyond 2024.