PPP warns Qureshi against censuring Zardari

Warraich says party knows how to ‘quieten’ criticism.

LAHORE: Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s announcement to join Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf is not the only thing that seems to have bothered his former party.

A day after the former foreign minister addressed a public gathering in Ghotki where he announced he was joining Imran Khan’s PTI, Pakistan Peoples Party Punjab President Imtiaz Safdar Warraich has severely criticised Qureshi’s remarks that under the President Zardari’s tenure, Pakistan’s nuclear assets are unsafe.

“If Qureshi had reservations about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, he should have raised them as foreign minister,” he told a press conference at the PPP Punjab Secretariat in Lahore. “At that time, he often expressed his satisfaction over the command and control of the assets.”

Calling Qureshi’s claims a ploy to raise his popularity, Warraich warned him against criticising Zardari. “He must refrain from using derogatory language against Zardari ... the PPP knows how to quieten him. If he doesn’t mend his ways, the PPP will take direct action and Qureshi knows very well how the PPP’s workers respond [to situations like these],” he said.

In an effort to prove that the country’s nuclear assets are important to the party, he said that former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had laid the foundation of Pakistan’s nuclear programme which had been continued by his daughter, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. “Because the world has taken note of Qureshi’s statement, the PPP has decided to respond to it,” he said, insinuating that otherwise, the former foreign minister’s statement was of no consequence.

In a further attempt to prove that the PPP prioritised Pakistan’s security, he said that the government is implementing all recommendations made in the resolution that was passed by a joint session of parliament, including those regarding the May 2 unilateral US raid in Abbottabad that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Talking about Qureshi’s Ghotki address, Warraich said it was strange that he ‘spared’ the PML-N’s leadership from his criticism. “This promotes and strengthens the idea that Qureshi is a PML-N implant into the PTI to disintegrate it so that, after PTI’s failure, he can easily join PML-N.”

Warraich said that in 2008, Qureshi had asked President Zardari to make him the chief minister of Punjab and later asked him for the slot of the foreign minister. “He must not forget that it was Zardari who made him the foreign minister. In politics, one should not launch into a diatribe if the benefits accorded to him are withdrawn.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2011.