Qureshi disappointed over Basit-Chaudhry ‘letter’

ISLAMABAD (INP): Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi lamented on Tuesday the alleged letter by former ambassador Abdul Basit to Pakistan’s envoy in US and former foreign secretary Aizaz Chaudhry.

Reading out the contents of Basit’s letter to Chaudhry outside the Parliament, Qureshi said he was shocked and saddened to see the letter.

The former foreign minister said the world will use this against us. “Unfortunately for four years we did not have a separate foreign minister and Nawaz Sharif was steering the country’s foreign policy,” he said.

The July 5, 2017 letter, which began circulating on the social media earlier in the day, has not been confirmed or denied by the Foreign Office.

In the letter, Basit, recently Pakistan’s High Commissioner in India, is seen criticising Chaudhry as being the ‘worst foreign secretary ever’. It is also written that Basit fears Chaudhry will also be the worst Pakistan ambassador in Washington DC. Basit also claims Chaudhry’s heart is not in the right place, saying “in this regard the less said the better”.

He also says that it is in Pakistan’s interest to immediately remove Chaudhry from DC and if not so, then he may not be given extension beyond his superannuation in Feb 2018.

“May Allah help Pakistan when people like you with weak dubious credentials are at such important positions,” the letter concludes.

Earlier this year, Basit took early retirement and returned from New Delhi after he was passed on twice as the foreign secretary following the promotion of Tehmina Janjua as foreign secretary this year and Chaudhry’s posting as foreign secretary in 2013.