Confidential report: Government to investigate reported leak, says information minister

Says date for all-party conference on national security will be decided after consultation with parliamentary parties.

ISLAMABAD:

Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid has said that the government will investigate the reported leak of the highly confidential Abbottabad Commission report to a foreign media outlet.

“First we have to see if the report aired on foreign [news] channel [Al Jazeera] is factual or fiction and then we will investigate,” the minister told journalists on Tuesday.

About the scheduled all-party conference on national security, the minister said the date for holding APC will be decided after consultations with all parliamentary parties.



Earlier July 12 was proposed for the APC after discussions with Pakistan Tehreek-e- Insaf (PTI) and other political parties. Initially‚ PTI chief Imran Khan consented to attend the conference but later he excused himself due to his foreign visit.

“It was our desire that Imran Khan attends the conference in view of his stance on national security,” Rashid said. Imran Khan and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa chief minister had also asked the prime minister to convene a meeting to discuss national security issues.

The minister said the main objective of the conference is to evolve a national security strategy aimed at strengthening the writ of the state and ensuring sovereignty of the country being violated by both drone attacks and the killers of innocent people, including polio vaccinators.



To a question‚ Rashid said nobody would come for the rescue of former President Pervez Musharraf, “the law has taken its course against him.”

Regarding MQM chief Altaf Hussain, the minister said the matter was not taken up with British Prime Minister David Cameron during his recent visit.

“Their laws are very strict and anyone who helps a criminal is regarded as a criminal,” he said about British laws.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 10^th, 2013.