ISLAMABAD – Former Pakistani Foreign Office Spokesperson levels seriousallegations against Nawaz Sharif over Kulbhushan Jhadav case.
Former Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Tasneem Aslam has that former primeminister Nawaz Sharif had barred the FO from commenting against Indianatrocities in held Kashmir and its spy Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav.
Jadav, a serving Indian army official, is presently in Pakistan’s custody.
“Nawaz Sharif did not want to say anything against India and Jadhav throughthe Foreign Office,” she said during an interviewlink with a YouTube channel ofjournalist Essa Naqvi. When asked if Sharif’s instruction benefited thecountry, she said, “It did not benefit the country but I do not knowwhether it benefited his [Nawaz’s] own interests or not.”
Tasneem worked as FO spokesperson twice — first from 2005 to 2007 duringthe regime of President Pervez Musharraf and then during the last PakistanMuslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government between 2013 and 2017.
She said that Nawaz had business interests in India and he did not meetleaders of Indian Occupied Kashmir’s (IOK) political party HurriyatConferences when he visited India as the prime minister. “Usually, everyprime minister of Pakistan meets Hurriyat leaders but Nawaz Sharif did notmeet them when he visited India,” she added.
Nawaz had visited India in 2014 to attend the swearing-in ceremony of itsPrime Minister-designate Narendra Modi.
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Tasneem said even in his speech at the United Nations (UN) summit Sharifdid not talk about India and Jadhav but on the Kashmir issue.
When asked, PML-N information secretary Marriyum Aurangzeb said thecomments by a retired FO official “bore no resemblance to reality”.
“It is a false and biased expression of an individual’s views, based on herpersonal predilections,” she said.
Recalling efforts made by Sharif to resolve the Kashmir dispute, Marriyumsaid, “The principled manner in which he dealt with the issue of Pakistan’srelations with its eastern neighbor is well documented.”
She said the former prime minister’s address to the UN General Assembly in2016 contained the “most forceful references” ever to the issue of Kashmirand the “most powerful condemnation of the atrocities and brutalities ofthe Indian occupation forces [in the held valley]”.
