WASHINGTON: The United States has again rejected charges by Prime Minister Imran Khan that Washington is trying to engineer a regime change in Islamabad including his naming of an American official who he said sent threatening messages calling for his ouster while expressing support for a constitutional process and rule of law in the country.
“There is no truth to these allegations. We respect and support Pakistan’s constitutional process and the rule of law,” a US State Department spokesperson said on Monday.
The US official said Washington is “closely following developments in Pakistan,” even as the matter of constitutional propriety was taken to the country’s Supreme Court.
“As you heard from me last week, we support the peaceful upholding of constitutional and democratic principles in Pakistan,” State Department Spokesperson Ned Price told reporters at his daily news conference.
“It is the case around the world. We do not support one political party over another. We support the broader principles, the principles of rule of law, of equal justice under the law,” he said.
Price reiterated that there is no truth in the allegations that the United States is interfering in the internal affairs of Pakistan and tried to topple the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
“There is absolutely no truth to the allegations,” Price said in response to a question.
Earlier, Imran Khan dropped all pretence of the US role he had alleged by euphemistically referring to a “foreign power” rather than naming it directly. In a meeting with his party men over the weekend, he went even further, directly named Donald Lu, the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, as the person who purportedly sought a regime change in Islamabad if ties between the US and Pakistan were to improve.
Lu, a 30-year veteran of the State Department, is a former ambassador to Albania and Kyrgystan, and is currently the State Department point person for the region.
According to Khan, Lu had held out threats to Pakistan in a meeting with Pakistan’s outgoing Ambassador Asad Majeed Khan, warning there could be implications if he (Imran Khan) survived the opposition’s no-confidence motion in the National Assembly.
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