Shehbaz speaks at UNGA on 25 September: Kashmir, Palestine and a Tim Cook meeting

Update, 26 September 2026: The prime minister gave the speech on 25 September. Read what he said on the Indus Waters Treaty, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Hormuz: Shehbaz UNGA speech 2026, the key points.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif addresses the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September, and Pakistan's permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, says Kashmir and Palestine will be at the centre of it.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar is already in New York holding meetings with counterparts ahead of the leaders' week.

What Pakistan is taking to New York

The Foreign Office list is broader than the two headline issues: sustainable development, climate change, counterterrorism, Islamophobia, economic challenges, UN reform, and the concerns of the Global South.

On Kashmir and Palestine the position has not moved. Ahmad said Pakistan will "speak about Kashmir and Palestine" alongside multilateral cooperation and the current global situation, and the country continues to argue for Palestinian statehood and for Kashmiri self-determination through UN resolutions.

The meetings around the speech

The general debate is where the speech happens. The bilaterals on the margins are where anything gets done. Multiple leader-level meetings are being arranged, and the Foreign Office is also working on a meeting with Apple executive chairman Tim Cook.

That last one is not decoration. Pakistan's pitch to large technology firms has been services exports and engineering talent rather than manufacturing, and a meeting at that level is the sort of thing the government will want to show for the trip.

The backdrop is the Gulf

This General Assembly week is dominated by the US-Iran confrontation and the Strait of Hormuz. That is a Pakistani economic story as much as a diplomatic one, because the strait is the route most of the country's imported crude and LNG travels. Brent fell to $101.71 on Monday on hopes that the UN week produces a diplomatic opening.

Pakistan also signed a mutual defence agreement with Saudi Arabia earlier this month, which puts Islamabad closer to the centre of the Gulf file than it has been in years and raises the stakes on whatever is said in New York.

What to watch

The speech is on 25 September. What is worth reading afterwards is not the text but the readouts of the bilaterals, and whether anything lands on trade access, climate financing or the Gulf security file.