Mohammad bin Salman has been welcomed with a fighter jet escort, a gold-plated submachine gun and Pakistan’s highest civilian honour on the lavish first leg of an Asian tour aimed at rehabilitating the image of the Saudi Arabian crown prince five months after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

After being personally chauffeured from the airport by the country’s prime minister, Imran Khan, Prince Mohammed signed agreements worth $20bn on Monday, a crucial injection of funds for an ailing economy suffering a foreign-currency crunch and which is currently negotiating its 13th IMF bailout in 40 years.

The day was declared a public holiday in Pakistan, and pictures of the powerful royal dotted the capital Islamabad. In celebration, the Saudis announced the release of more than 2,000 Pakistani prisoners from their jails.

With trips to US and European capitals unlikely in the near future, the royal visits to Pakistan, India and China this week are an important opportunity for the crown prince to prove he is still an acceptable statesman in the wake of the murder of Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi journalist.

Analysts have said the tour is part of a Gulf pivot to rising Asia as a growing oil market, but also a timely demonstration to the west that Prince Mohammed is not an international pariah. Crucially, India, Pakistan and China have all been silent on Khashoggi’s killing.

“These visits [are] an attempt to portray to his subjects that it is business as usual for the royal family,” Rodger Shanahan, a fellow at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute who specialises in Middle Eastern politics, said.

#Pakistan fighter jets escort #Saudi crown prince's jet in Asia tour pic.twitter.com/axm1iRTee8 — On The News Line (@OnTheNewsLine) February 18, 2019

After Pakistan, the crown prince arrived in Delhi on Tuesday evening, where he was welcomed at the airport by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who embraced him in a characteristic bear hug.

The royal visit had briefly appeared in doubt last week after a Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) used a car laden with explosives to bomb a convoy of Indian paramilitaries in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Prince Mohammed pressed ahead but will have to walk a diplomatic tightrope in Delhi, which has blamed Pakistan for the bombing and sworn revenge.

A joint statement issued in Islamabad on Monday said both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan “underlined the need for avoiding politicisation of UN listing regime” – a significant concession to Islamabad, which has fought efforts to have JeM chief Masood Azhar formally added to a UN terrorist watchlist.

The Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Monday his country would try to de-escalate tensions between south Asia’s nuclear-armed neighbours.

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is flanked by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa in Islamabad. Photograph: HANDOUT/AFP/Getty Images

The car bombing, the deadliest attack in the history of Kashmir’s 30-year insurgency, provides an unwelcome opportunity for controversy on a crucial tour for the man slated as Saudi Arabia’s future king.

The murder of the journalist Khashoggi in Istanbul in October – which US intelligence has concluded was probably ordered by the crown prince – has severely tarnished his attempted makeover as a moderniser of the austere kingdom.

It has also raised doubts over his capacity to assume the Saudi throne, emphasising the need to show he can still command important audiences abroad.

“Status is important within the royal families of the Middle East, and a measure of status is how they are viewed throughout the world,” said Shanahan.

Prince Mohammed made his first state visit overseas since the murder to north Africa in December, where was warmly met in Egypt but dogged in Tunisia by protesters wielding saws – a reference to Khashoggi’s alleged dismemberment. The king of Morocco declined to meet with him.