‘Massive crime’ if contents of leaked cipher true, Shahbaz Sharif

 

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said that if the contents of a diplomatic cipher — sent to Islamabad last year by Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US and which former prime minister Imran Khan cited as proof of a conspiracy to remove his government — allegedly published in a US-based news organisation were true, it was tantamount to a “massive crime”. 

The purported cipher contained an account of a meeting between US State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and Pakistani envoy Asad Majeed Khan, and was reproduced on Wednesday by The Intercept.

As per the purported contents of the cable, the US objected to Imran Khan’s foreign policy regarding the Ukraine war. 

The US State Department — while refraining from commenting on the veracity of the published cable — said its contents did not show the US taking a position on who the leader of Pakistan should be. 

Although The Intercept has claimed in its report that they were provided with the document by an anonymous source in the Pakistani military “who said that they had no ties to Imran Khan or [Mr] Khan’s party,”.

In an interview with WE News today, PM Shehbaz was asked if The Intercept story proved Imran’s claims regarding the cipher and the foreign conspiracy. 

“The answer to your question is that two meetings of the National Security Committee were held on the cipher under my leadership. In one of the meetings, former ambassador and Foreign Secretary Asad Majeed clearly stated that there was no discussion of a conspiracy in his meeting with Donald Lu,” the outgoing premier said. 

He said former army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and other service chiefs also confirmed that there was no conspiracy against Pakistan, adding that Majeed too had stated that there was no question of a conspiracy at all.