Senator Tariq Azeem, former minister of state dismissed in Senate Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani's statement claiming he never held a secret meeting with Memogate whistleblower Mansoor Ejaz. Prime Minister Gilani, while speaking on the floor of upper house of parliament on Wednesday, had said that he knew one senator, who was in constant touch with Ejaz.
Talking to Business Recorder here on Saturday, he said he had contacted Ejaz on the directives of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain to determine whether he was ready to appear before the Senate standing committee on defence and foreign affairs, to which he agreed. "I never knew him [Ejaz] before...I spoke to him over the phone as a member of the parliamentary committee [and] Professor Khurshid Ahmed wrote a letter to the committee requesting that Ejaz be invited to appear before the committee, so everything is on record, nothing happened in secret," he added.
Answering a question, he said the Prime Minister had probably made those remarks because he had held a meeting with PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif in Lahore two days after the petition was filed in Supreme Court seeking a thorough probe into the Memo scandal. "This was a routine meeting as I am a politician. It has nothing to do with the memo but the prime minister might have thought that there might be some sort of conspiracy going on against government etc, which is absurd," he added. However, Prime Minister's statement showed that the telephone calls of politicians were being taped, Tariq Azeem said that such a practice was illegal and immoral.
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