Our Correspondent
Multan
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said that India had tried to push Pakistan into the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) blacklist but it failed despite making repeated efforts to that effect.
“The government has worked a lot on FATF in limited time and in this connection bills have also been passed in consultation with the opposition from parliament,” said the foreign minister while talking to the media on Saturday.
However, the opposition parties voted in favour of the bills in the National Assembly but opposed it in the Senate, he added.
He said passage of the FATF-related bills was the need of the hour and expressed the hope that “Pakistan will come out from the grey list”.
Qureshi said that mourning processions were being taken out across the world today but these were banned in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian forces were arresting the Kashmiri people to stop them from mourning. He appealed to Ulema to describe the Indian atrocities in IIOJK during their speeches.
Qureshi has urged former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to return to the country and to face the legal cases, stating that the PML-N supreme leader is morally and legally bound to return.
“The health condition of Nawaz Sharif has improved as he is taking part in domestic politics from the United Kingdom, where he had gone for medical treatment.
“Nawaz was allowed to leave the country on compassionate grounds on recommendations of medical experts,” Qureshi said on Saturday while talking to media in his hometown.
Sharif, who was sentenced to seven-year jail term in Al-Azizia corruption case in 2018, was granted eight-week bail on October 29, 2019 in view of a debilitating health condition. The PTI led federal government later granted him a rare permission to get medical treatment abroad and the PML-N leader on November 19, 2019 flew to London in an air ambulance. In February, the Punjab government, however, refused to further extend Nawaz’s bail after he failed to submit the medical report demanded by a medical board formed by the government. The provincial government ordered the convicted former premier to surrender to authorities.
Recently both Prime Minster Imran Khan and his key cabinet members and advisers have claimed that the government will use all legal means to bring back the former premier.
“The PML-N leaders are not sharing medical reports of Nawaz Sharif despite the fact that his brother [PML-N President] Shehbaz Sharif was his guarantor [who assured the government that Nawaz would return after getting medical treatment],” Qureshi added.
