Needs to choose its friends carefully.

"Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is likely to visit Iran and Saudi Arabia on Saturday (yesterday) as part of Islamabad's efforts to defuse the increasing tensions in the Middle East, diplomatic sources said on Friday." "Khan might be accompanied by a senior Pakistan army representative, they said." Why? Doesn't the army trust him to say the right things? Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) had given his private jet to Imran "to travel to the US on a week long visit and to attend the 74th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York last month". However, MBS "was so alienated by some dimensions of the Pakistani prime minister's diplomacy in New York -- he couldn't have been happy at the prospect of Imran Khan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Mohathir Mohammad planning to jointly represent the Islamic bloc, nor with Pakistan's interlocution with Iran without his explicit approval -- that he visibly snubbed Imran by ordering his private jet to disembowel the Pakistani delegation", said an editorial in the Friday Times. Good thing only the plane was disembowelled, after what Erdogan's gruesome allegations about Jamal Khashoggi. "Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa has privately met top business leaders to find ways to bolster the economy, according to people familiar with the matter," wrote Faseeh Mangi for Bloomberg. "Some of the meetings resulted in prompt decisions including sending instructions to top government officials, the people said, without giving any specific examples." Clearly, Imran is irrelevant. This, after Imran extended Bajwa's tenure as army chief for another full term of 3 years. Bajwa was supposed to retire next month. No wonder the deputy speaker of the National Assembly had to bar opposition members from calling him a 'selected' prime minister instead of an elected one. Bajwa and director general of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Faiz Hamid supervised Imran during his meeting with US President Donald Trump in July. "This was also the first time since 2015 that a Pakistani prime minister met with a US president." Imran was snubbed by the US last month when Trump pulled out of talks with the Taliban aimed at ending the 18-year war in Afghanistan. Imran hoped for US support in his stand on Kashmir in return for a facilitating a deal between the US and the Taliban. Especially, after the savage repression of people in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK). In fact, Pakistan's control of the POK region is based on forged signatures of past leaders. Thankfully, the news is not all bad for Imran. "Global investors are piling into Pakistan's local-currency bonds like never before," wrote Mangi. The bad news is that, "Pakistan needs to repay China more than double the amount it owes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the next three years, as loans racked up to boost foreign exchange reserves and bridge a financing gap become due." We know what China will do. Good thing Imran Khan has experience of being "disembowelled".