US acknowledges Pakistan's 'continued efforts' to satisfy FATF obligations

Price says Pakistan made significant progress on its first action plan with 26 of 27 action items largely addressed.

WASHINGTON:

The United States has acknowledged Pakistan's "continued efforts" to meet the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) requirements and said it recognises and supports the "significant progress" on the first action plan with 26 of 27 action items "largely addressed".

The statement came from US State Department spokesperson Ned Price during the July 19 press briefing. The spokesperson was answering a question regarding Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s statement that India is politicizing the FATF in efforts to ensure that Pakistan remained on the watchdog's increased monitoring list.

"Well, you’re referring to Pakistan’s obligations under the Financial Action Task Force, and we do recognise, and we support Pakistan’s continued efforts to satisfy those obligations. Pakistan has made significant progress on its first action plan with 26 of 27 action items largely addressed," said Price.

According to Price, the US would "encourage Pakistan to continue working with the FATF and the international community to swiftly complete the remaining action items by demonstrating that terrorism financing, investigations, and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated groups".

“We do further encourage Pakistan to expeditiously implement its new second action plan," he added.

The spokesperson’s remarks came a day after Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar admitted that the Narendra Modi government had “ensured” Pakistan remained on the FATF grey list.

“Due to us, Pakistan is under the lens of FATF and it was kept in the grey list,” Indian news agency ANI quoted Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar as saying while addressing a virtual training programme on the foreign policy for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders.

“We have been successful in pressuring Pakistan and the fact that its behaviour has changed is because of pressure put by India by various measures,” he added.

The Pakistani Foreign Office on Monday said that the government was considering approaching the president of the FATF for appropriate action against the government of India after Jaishankar confessed to politicising the global forum.

“Following the recent confession by the Indian government, India’s credentials for assessing Pakistan in FATF as co-chair of the Joint Group or for that matter any other country are subject to questions, which we urge FATF to look into,” the Foreign Office Spokesperson Zahid Hafiz Chaudhri said.

Earlier this month, Qureshi had urged the FATF to take action against India for sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan.

In a statement, Qureshi said evidence of Indian state-sponsored terrorism unveiled by Islamabad last year once again stood vindicated after an investigation concluded Lahore’s Johar Town blast was orchestrated by the intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

He further said that India was making attempts to misuse the forum of the FATF for political purposes and doing propaganda against Pakistan.

Also read: FATF web

Pakistan had been placed on the FATF grey list with effect from June 2018 and was asked to implement a 27-point action plan to exit the list.