Pakistan's Asif: "Time Has Come" to Implement Mecca Pact — But Turkey's Ratification Still Pending Until October

Hours after the Sep 17 Taif attack, Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said "the time has come" to implement the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, telling reporters "the Mecca agreement applies to us, and we will fulfil our duty" while declining to specify what action Pakistan would take. The rhetorical shift from his Sep 11 description of the pact as merely "hypothetical" was not matched by movement on the ground: Saudi Arabia still had not issued a formal activation request, and reporting revealed Turkey has not yet submitted the agreement for parliamentary ratification, with approval unlikely before October; Pakistan's own internal ratification process was also incomplete. Analysts noted the pact still lacks a joint operational framework, and Israeli Gulf-security analyst Yoel Guzansky called the partners' muted response "a catastrophe from the Saudi perspective," saying Riyadh's allies "did not think it through."