Chicken is finally out of the egg

Former spokesperson of Foreign Office, Tasneem Aslam said in interview with  Islamabad based You Tube Cannel journalist Isa Naqvi that former Prime Minister  Nawaz Sharif had instructed the Foreign Office for remaining silent on the arrest of high profile RAW agent Kalboshan Jadhev. He was a serving officer of Indian Navy who was on the payroll of RAW to plan and execute terrorist attacks in Pakistan. After arrest Jadhev was convicted on the basis of solid evidence and his confessional statement about masterminding acts of terrorism in the restive Baluchistan Province and Karachi. It merits mention that senior PPP leader Barister Aitezaz Ahsan had questioned  Nawaz Sharif silence over RAW agent arrest and subsequent conviction  in his speech in Senate and offered a donation of Rs.50,000 for an orphanage if former Prime Minister once uttered the name of Jadhev. When India took the case of Jadhev’s conviction to the International Court of Justice, the then Attorney General Ashtrao Ausaf Ali did not go to The Hague to defend Pakistan’s case.

Ms Aslam admitted that the docile India policy of Nawaz Sharif did not bring any benefit for Pakistan. However, she expressed ignorance as to whether his pro-India stance brings any gain for Nawaz Sharif. But she disclosed that former Prime Minister has business interest in India and he refrained from meeting leaders of India-held Kashmir’s political party Hurriate Conference during his visit to New Delhi in 2014.

Former Foreign Office spokesperson refereed to another instance of Nawaz Sharif second fiddle style of leadership in India policy when he did not dwelt on human rights violations in occupied Kashmir and not even mention Jadhev in his speech at UN General Assembly in 2016.

The second and third tenures of Nawaz Sharif are replete with precedents of being unnecessarily soft on India. India successfully sold a narrative that Pakistan is sponsoring cross border terrorism which was not countered. The submissive body-language of Nawaz Sharif in front of his Indian counterpart Nrendra Modi in the meeting in the Russian city of Ufa and the signing of diluted version of joint declaration on July 10 2015, omitting the mention of Kashmir dispute was criticized by political leaders and diplomats. The declaration had been signed by the then Foreign Secretary of Pakistan Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry and his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar. The deliberate omission of core issue of Kashmir from the text of Ufa declaration had been criticised by Jahangir Ashraf Qazi former Pakistan’s ambassador in New Delhi in his article titled “The Ufa goof up”  which was published in leading English daiuly Newspaper on July 14. 2015. Wait and see how other PML-N leaders give clarification of  the contents of interview of a former Foreign Service career diplomat because Maryam Aurangzeb response does not rebut it.