Manama: Bahrain and Pakistan have denounced terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and reaffirmed their desire to strengthen their cooperation, at both the bilateral and multilateral levels, in combating terrorism and its financing.
They also stressed the importance of increasing bilateral defence and security cooperation, and decided to enhance exchange of security information and intelligence and assessments.
In a joint statement issued in the end of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif two-day official visit to Bahrain, the two countries agreed broaden and deepen bilateral engagement in all mutually beneficial fields, and underscored the importance of this approach to provide impetus for promoting political and economic relations, tourism and people-to-people contacts.
The two countries expressed their satisfaction over improving economic cooperation between the two brotherly countries, and recognised the potential for greater trade and commercial exchanges, and agreed to take all steps necessary to provide a greater impetus to bilateral trade turnover. They also agreed on the need to encourage the private sector to participate in the establishment of a Pakistan Energy Fund, the statement carried by Bahrain News Agency (BNA) on Thursday said.
The two countries also agreed on enhancing cooperation in the fields of energy, youth and sports, advancement of women, social works and human resource development, agriculture, marine resources, cattle breeding, poultry and fish-farming.
They underscored the importance of continuing regular consultations through the existing institutional mechanisms and agreed to hold the inaugural meeting of the Bahrain-Pakistan Joint Ministerial Commission in Islamabad in 2015.
On Palestine, they called upon the international community to work towards reaching a peaceful solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on the two-state solution in accordance with relevant UN resolutions, and the Arab Peace Initiative. They reaffirmed their determination to provide the necessary support to reach a solution that leads to the establishment of an independent sovereign Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders with Al-Quds as its capital, and solve all final status issues.
The two countries signed a number of agreements and memoranda of understanding (MoU) that included an agreement on exemption from Short Stay Visa for Diplomatic and Special Passport holders (Bahrain) and Diplomatic and Official Passport holders (Pakistan), and MoUs on twinning Islamabad and Manama, Education and Higher Education, cooperation between the University of Bahrain and Quaid-i-Azam University, cooperation in the field of Culture and Arts and co-operation in the field of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)’ development.
In the joint statement, “Pakistan congratulated Bahrain on the successful holding of free and fair general elections on November 22 and 29, stressing that the participation of the people of Bahrain in large numbers demonstrated their faith in the political system and confidence in the leadership of Bahrain.”
