MADINA: Prime Minis­ter Nawaz Sharif called on Monday for an accord among Muslim countries to eliminate the menace of terrorism which was affecting world peace.

“With a financial cost of around $120 billion and thousands of precious human lives, Pakistan has suffered a lot due to this scourge,” the prime minister said during an informal interaction with journalists accompanying him during his three-day stay in Saudi Arabia.

He said that as the Western world was uniting against terrorism, the Muslim world should also be on the same page to eliminate this threat.

Mr Sharif, who was in Saudi Arabia to attend the first Arab-Islamic-Ameri­c­an summit on terrorism at the invitation of King Salman bin Abdulaziz, said that Pakistan, owing to its war against terrorism, had curbed this menace to a large extent. He urged Afghan­is­tan to also wage a war against this menace.

In reply to a question about his interaction with US President Donald Trump during the summit, the prime minister said: “It was a good meeting.”

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2017