Congress slams PM Modi’s ‘personalised diplomacy’ after Saudi-Pak defence pact

The Congress on Thursday accused the Modi Government of repeated failures on the foreign policy front, citing recent developments involving Pakistan, China, the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Referring to a series of international engagements, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said the Prime Minister’s much-touted “personalised diplomacy” had once again suffered a setback, with grave implications for India’s national security.

In a post on X, Ramesh pointed to three recent events: “A month after Operation Sindoor was abruptly stopped, President Trump hosted Field Marshal Asim Munir for lunch at the White House—the same person whose incendiary and inflammatory statements directly led to the Pahalgam terror attacks of April 2025.”

He further said that days after the Prime Minister’s official visit to Beijing, “President Xi threw open China’s secret military complex to Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari.”

The Congress leader also flagged the latest development from Riyadh, saying: “Now, Saudi Arabia, where the Prime Minister was when the Pahalgam terror attacks took place, has signed a ‘strategic mutual defence’ pact with Pakistan.”

“These actions by major powers underscore the failure of our government’s personalised diplomacy, which is being projected as a foreign policy success but is in fact proving counterproductive,” he further wrote.

The Congress maintained that such diplomatic setbacks demanded serious introspection, warning that the country could ill afford a foreign policy approach that left it isolated amid shifting global alignments.