Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir met Thursday with US President Donald Trump at the White House, where the leaders discussed bilateral ties, regional security and counterterrorism.
US Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also attended the talks.
Sharif thanked Trump for acknowledging Pakistan’s role in counterterrorism and called for deeper cooperation on security and intelligence. He praised Trump’s leadership style as bold and decisive and credited him with helping to prevent a major disaster in South Asia by mediating a cease-fire between India and Pakistan during their four-day military clash in May.
The prime minister extended an invitation for Trump to make an official visit to Pakistan and lauded his recent efforts to press for an immediate end to the war in Gaza, including hosting key Muslim leaders in New York earlier this week for talks on restoring peace in the Middle East.
Sharif said he hoped Pakistan-US relations would strengthen under Trump’s leadership and invited American companies to invest in agriculture, information technology, mining, minerals and energy in Pakistan.
The meeting was the first official bilateral engagement between the two leaders, six years after former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to Trump at the White House in 2019.