PM should stop 'embarrassing' Pakistan with his statements: Ch Nisar

Nisar lashes out at Abbasi for backing foreign minister's statement about the need for 'in-house cleaning'

The PM should definitely put “our own house in order” but refrain from issuing statements that embarrass Pakistan internationally, former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said on Tuesday.

In an informal talk with reporters, Nisar took a dig at his own party’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Ali Abbasi and said no one had objections to “in-house cleaning” but government officials should stick to taking concrete steps instead of issuing statements.

“Pakistan is now accepting the same thing that India keeps saying [about it],” said Nisar. “Has the Indian government or politicians ever acknowledged extremist violence happening there?”



Nisar was referring to recent statements made by Abbasi in which the PM had said that he backed Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif’s statement that “our own house should be cleaned.”

The former interior minister further said terrorists from Afghanistan come inside Pakistan and wreak havoc on the locals but neither Afghanistan nor the US had ever spoken about the need for in-house cleaning in Afghanistan.

Earlier, statements in the media attributed to the PM had also emerged wherein he had reportedly said the bombers who killed more than 90 people in an attack in Kabul in May were likely to have crossed the border from Pakistan.



“I don’t know all the details, but it seems three or four people crossed over the border. There was a vehicle which travelled from that area to Kabul and was parked in an embassy compound before it blew up,” Abbasi said, according to Financial Times. “We have 250,000 troops fighting there, but we don’t have control of the full area. [Militants] often cross the border from the other side and attack our people. If the Afghan army cannot control them, and US forces cannot control them, what are we supposed to do?”

The PM House, however, maintained that the Financial Times had misquoted Abbasi.

“The remarks are simply baseless and have no reference to discussions with any media person,” the PM House said in a statement issued on Monday.