Dastgir asks govt to present evidence on PDM security threats

Hails country’s intelligence agencies for their professionalism

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan Muslim LeagueNawaz (PML-N) senior leader Khurram Dastgir has urged the government to share details of any security threats in the major cities where the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) is scheduled to hold rallies in the next couple of months with the party’s parliamentary leaders.

“We have heard this story several times. If there is evidence, even the premier can call a National Security Meeting and parliamentary leaders can be invited there,” he said while speaking in Express News talk show “The Review”. “If it is just to scare us then you would see that there will not be any follow-up on it. PDM rallies are peaceful and they do not disturb political stability,” he added.

The PML-N leader also expressed his views on Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and DG ISPR Major General Babar Iftikhar’s joint press conference wherein they had shared “irrefutable evidence” of India’s sponsorship of terror in Pakistan. He said the country’s intelligence agencies displayed their skills through evidence and audio recordings and brought to the fore the facts that how India was attacking Pakistan.

“I need to express satisfaction that our intelligence agencies are countering the enemy’s conspiracies,” he said. The former foreign and defence minister noted that India continued to devise nefarious plans against Pakistan. “Through the Financial Action Task Force, India with the support of the US continued diplomatic onslaught against Pakistan,” he said. “India had been following the policy of ‘not war, not peace’ against Pakistan for the past half a decade,” he added.

Answering a question regarding his response to the evidence the intelligence agencies brought to him in 2016-17, Dastgir maintained that he took charge of office in the midst of 2017 after PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif was disqualified. The PML-N leader observed that he started attending the national security meetings after assuming office and, while maintaining the confidentiality and evidence pertaining to espionage of countries considered enemies and those that were not used to be presented before the government.

He stressed on the need to present Pakistan’s point of view against its enemies through better research instead of “learning about conspiracies from foreign writers’ books after a few years”. Responding to a question why the PML-N government had refrained from presenting such compelling dossiers, Dastgir declared that the news about India’s espionage came to the fore during the incumbent government’s tenure after 27 months.