Pakistan announced that its close ally Saudi Arabia will not join the $50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), days after Islamabad said Riyadh will be the third “strategic partner” to China’s flagship project under the controversy-hit Belt and Road Initiative.

The CPEC is the flagship project of the multi-billion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a pet project of President Xi Jinping aimed at enhancing Beijing’s influence around the world through China-funded infrastructure projects.

Minister for planning and development Khusro Bakhtiar told media on Tuesday that the cash-rich kingdom’s proposed investments would fall under a separate bilateral arrangement, Dawn reported.

“Saudi Arabia is not to become a collateral strategic partner in the CPEC. This impression is not true,” he said.

A third country can participate in CPEC by taking part in the business and investment ventures arising out of the project, Bakhtiar said.

“The framework between China and Pakistan is bilateral and Saudi Arabia is not entering that framework as a third-party investor, rather the base of the CPEC will be broadened and its pace will be expedited,” he said.

Last month, information minister Fawad Chaudhry said that Saudi Arabia is the third “strategic partner” of the CPEC, soon after Prime Minister Imran Khan returned from his first foreign trip to the kingdom.

Interestingly Chaudhry was sitting with Bakhtiar when he issued the clarification that Saudi Arabia participation in the CPEC was not as third partner in the project.

Bakhtiar further said that there was no decision to bring a third country, like Saudi Arabia, under the framework of the CPEC. He was responding to questions about the possibility of Saudi Arabia becoming part of the Joint Working Groups or Joint Coordination Committee on the CPEC.

Bakhtiar said there could be many offshoots of the CPEC where third countries could be involved in trilateral arrangement for infrastructure development, like China-Pakistan-Japan, China-Pakistan-Saudi Arabia or China-Pakistan-Germany. Bakhtiar said that any country can invest in the CPEC on project basis. Saudi Arabia or any other country, he said, can enter into a trilateral investment framework. He said the third-party investment framework has been designed in consultation with China.

The minister dodged questions when asked how the cost of Main Railway Line had been reduced by a whopping $2 billion from $8.2 billion to $6.2 billion as claimed by railways minister Shaikh Rasheed Ahmed.

“I have noticed this today that Sheikh Rasheed is making some efforts (to reduce the cost) but not to my knowledge. Nothing has come in front of me to suggest that the cost has come down,” he said.

Bakhtiar said the CPEC portfolio currently stands at about $50 billion, of which about $6 billion was government-to-government loan and remaining in Independent Power Producers mode mostly in the energy sector. About $29 billion worth of projects were currently in progress.

Man extradited to UK

Pakistan extradited a man to the UK on Tuesday where he will be tried for murder in connection with a 2002 fire that killed eight members of one family, the West Yorkshire police said.

Shahid Mohammed was arrested in Rawalpindi in 2015 after nearly 13 years on the run and is scheduled to appear at a court in Leeds.