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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday met with world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the sidelines of a two-day summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) Council of Heads of State (CHS), Sharif’s office said.

Sharif, who arrived on a six-day visit to China this week, was welcomed by President Xi Jinping at a banquet organized for leaders participating in the 25th SCO Council of Heads of States meeting in Tianjin.

The prime minister also held informal meetings with Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, Turkmenistan’s Serdar Berdimuhamedov, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

“Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was seen receiving extraordinary warmth from world leaders,” Sharif’s office said. “The closeness observed in these meetings reflects the brotherly and friendly relations between Pakistan and these countries.”

The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus, with 16 more countries affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners.”

China has long sought to present the regional group as a counterweight to Western-led power blocs and has pushed for greater collaboration between its member states.

On Sunday, Sharif held a meeting with Turkiye’s Erdogan, according to the former’s office. The two leaders condemned Israel’s “genocidal” policies in Gaza and vowed to advocate for Palestinian rights at all international platforms.

“The two sides exchanged views on key regional and international developments,” Sharif’s office said. “They expressed grave concern over the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza and reaffirmed their shared commitment to using international platforms to advocate for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and to condemn the ongoing Israeli aggression and genocidal policies.”

Sharif, who arrived in China on Saturday, will remain in the country till Sept. 4 to hold talks with senior Chinese leadership, including the country’s President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Qiang, an earlier statement from the foreign office said.

China has long been Pakistan’s largest investor and its closest strategic ally, anchored by the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Both sides are working to advance into “CPEC 2.0,” focused on industrialization, agriculture, energy and connectivity.

During the visit, the Pakistani prime minister will also chair the second Pakistan-China B2B Investment Conference in Beijing on Sept. 4 to boost trade and investment ties, the PM Office said in an earlier statement on Saturday.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top disaster management body has warned that the country is facing a climate emergency as major natural hazards have been hitting every two months and now pose a grave “national security threat,” underscoring the urgent need for resilience and preparedness measures.

Pakistan, which ranks among the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, has experienced increasingly erratic, frequent weather events, including heat waves, untimely rains, storms, cyclones and droughts, in recent years, which scientists have blamed on human-driven climate change.

The South Asian country is currently reeling from one of the deadliest floods in its history that have claimed more than 850 lives, according to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). The deluges swept away livestock and swathes of prime farmland in the most populous Punjab province.

Speaking at a press briefing on Sunday, NDMA chief Lt. Gen. Inam Haider Malik said they were planning short-, medium- and long-term measures to deal with these frequently occurring climate disasters, including the monsoon season that bring South Asia up to 80 percent of its annual rainfall.

“After every two months, Pakistan is facing a big disaster, in which the winter hazards are yet to come, after that, the early heatwave will come, and whatever will be triggered by the early heatwave, in which there are forest fires, and the next heatwave, and after that, another monsoon,” Malik said.

“Unfortunately, this is a part of reality, as we just talked about, in climate change, this is intensifying in the coming years... now climate change is being taken as a national security threat.”

Global warming has worsened monsoon rains this year in Pakistan. While downpours and cloudbursts have triggered flash floods and landslides across the mountainous northern regions, residents in eastern Punjab have experienced abnormal amounts of rain as well as cross-border flooding after India released excess water from its overflowing dams into Pakistan.

In May, severe storms killed at least 32 people in northern parts of the country, while other regions experienced sweltering heatwaves.

Climate Change Minister Musadiq Malik said “the whole country is in chaos” right now, adding that they have been sharing their assessments reports with the prime minister as well as the military leadership.

He said their top priority is to provide relief to the poorest 800,000 of a total of 2 million people displaced by the deluges.

“We are trying very hard, 800,000 of them are those poor people who have no rich relatives, who have been displaced, who need water, who have water-borne diseases, that is, water which is not available, water which is not drinkable, the diseases that spread because of that, so that this epidemic does not spread,” he said.

“We have to deliver mosquito nets, we have to deliver tents, we have to deliver food, we have to deliver electricity, for all these things, our primary focus is on those displaced poor people on whom work is being done.”

The deluges have revived memories of the 2022 cataclysmic floods when a third of Pakistan was submerged, with more than 1,700 people killed, over 30 million affected and damages totaling $35 billion.

In the southern Sindh province, from where the dangerously high floodwaters are likely to pass in the coming days, local authorities have already started evacuating people to safety with support from army, navy and NDMA.

“It is our duty to protect every citizen,” the climate change minister said. “All the civil institutions are standing with the provinces, our 1122 is standing with the provinces, so God willing, we will minimize the damage.”