Skip to main content

PM Khan's visit to GHQ: 'State policies are devised with input from institutions,' info minister says

Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhary on Friday termed the cancellation of an anti-Islam contest involving blasphemous caricatures in the premises of the Dutch parliament as an "achievement" for Islamabad.

However, he made it clear that the government still believes that a strategy needs to be devised on an international level against any such attempt in the future.

He also said that while a small group of people in the west may try to provoke Muslims, the majority could not be held responsible for the acts of that small group.

The minister recalled that the Government of The Netherlands had not been in favour of the contest and petitions had also been filed in the United Kingdom against blasphemy.

"After the prime minister's speech, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had contacted the government of Holland," he said, adding that Qureshi had told the Dutch that the global community will hold their government responsible if the contest was held.

PM's visit to GHQ

The information minister also touched on various other issues during his Friday address, which ranged from the prime minister's visit to the army's General Headquarters, to Punjab Information and Culture Minister Fayyazul Hassan Chohan's comments against actresses.

Talking about PM Khan's recent visit to the army headquarters, he said that state policies are devised with the input of institutions.

He said that during Thursday's meeting, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa had categorically stated that the army, like all other institutions, will work as an institution under the government. He added that Gen Bajwa had also made it clear that the army was bound to implement all policies devised by the government.

The minister further said that Prime Minister Imran Khan had said yesterday that since the country had been facing enormous challenges which could not be handled by a single person, all institutions would have to devise a joint strategy going forward.

The meeting at the army headquarters also discussed regional peace and stability as well as Islamabad's foreign relations with regional countries.

"Obviously, Kashmir was also discussed during the meeting," Chaudhary said.

Foreign affairs

Talking on foreign affairs, the information minister added that there is consensus in Pakistan over various issues.

"Islamabad wants peace and stability in Afghanistan," he said, adding that Pakistan also wants peace with India.

"We are two nuclear powers; we don't want war. We can either fight with each other or sign a treaty to fight jointly against poverty. Therefore, normalisation of relations with India is an important agenda," he said.

Chaudhary also said that Islamabad enjoys close relations with Iran, recalling that her foreign minister was on visit to Pakistan.

"Similarly," he said, "Saudi Arabia has been and will be a strategic partner for Pakistan."

"China has great economic interest in Pakistan. Our agreement with China is an expression of the socio-economic relations between the two countries. It is not a geo-strategic agreement, but a geopolitical and geo-economic agreement," he said while talking about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

He added that the government not only wants to complete, but further enhance the project. Giving a breakdown of CPEC projects, he said that projects worth $22 billion are associated with the energy sector, $6bn with infrastructure, while projects worth $42bn are yet to be realised.

"It is important to maintain a close economic relationship with China, but that does not mean that we will ruin our relations with the United States or we will not keep a relationship with Russia," he said.



from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/2PpvrC5
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trump says he urged team to ‘slow’ COVID-19 testing

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was encouraging health officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, arguing that increased tests lead to more cases being discovered. The president has claimed falsely on several occasions that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by greater numbers of diagnostic tests. At his first rally since the outbreak forced nationwide shutdowns in March, Trump told the crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma that testing was a “double-edged sword.” The United States — which has more deaths and cases than any other country — has carried out more than 25 million coronavirus tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita. “Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued. “So I said to my people ‘slow the testing down.’ They test and they test.” It was not clear from Trump’s tone if he was playing to the crowd, who ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sir Anwer Pervez, richest Pakistani British businessman, loses £432m in pandemic

Sir Anwar Pervez OBE, the founder and chairman of Bestway Cash & Carry has lost £432 million during the coronavirus pandemic to bring him down to No 50 on the richest British people list. The list has 1,000 people and is published by the Sunday Times newspaper . Pervez was at No 42 previously.  The 2020 list of the UK’s richest shows its first fall in wealth in a decade as Britain’s wealthiest people lost tens of billions of pounds in the coronavirus pandemic, the Sunday Times reported in its Rich List 2020. The newspaper, which has produced the respected annual ranking of the country’s 1,000 wealthiest people since 1989, found the past two months had resulted in the super-rich losing £54 billion ($65 billion). More than half of the billionaires in Britain had seen drops in their worth by as much as £6b, a decrease in their collective wealth unprecedented since 2009 and the financial crisis. The Hinduja brothers, who topped last year’s list with a £22b fortune, saw among ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Despite reservations about jury, Pakistan to implement FATF reforms: envoy

WASHINGTON: Despite its reservations about the fairness of the jury which is to determine Pakistan’s performance against terror financing, the government is committed to implementing its action plan for dealing with this issue, says Islamabad’s Washington envoy Asad Majeed Khan. In a conversation with a prominent US scholar George Perkovich, recorded at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Monday afternoon, Ambassador Khan said the actions that Pakistan had taken so far to eliminate terror financing were “reflective of the political will”. “We feel that we have done a lot. We are also clear and determined to do more,” said the envoy while responding to a question about a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held in Orlando last week, which asked Pakistan to implement its own action plan for eliminating terror financing by October. Failing to do so could put Pakistan on a blacklist of violators and bring strict economic sanctions too. “But we w...
Post a Comment
Read more