LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Senior Vice President Fawad Chaudhry on Saturday rejected the statement of United States President Joe Biden saying he does not know anything about Pakistan’s nuclear programme; “our nuclear assets are under the National Command and Control Authority and its mechanism is one of the best in the world.”
The former minister expressed these views while addressing a press conference in response to the US President’s recent remarks on Pakistan here. PTI Central General Secretary Hammad Azhar also joined him.
Chaudhry added that Pakistan’s nuclear programme is centralised and not decentralised, and the Prime Minister of Pakistan heads the National Command and Control Authority. “Both senior civil and military officials are the members of the Authority,” he added.
“Many atomic accidents have taken place in various parts of the world including an American B-52 plane carrying nuclear missiles went missing for seven hours and theft of uranium in India on regular basis. India’s nuclear programme is considered the most unsafe in the world. However, in Pakistan, not one incident related to our nuclear programme has taken place. All international forums praised the safety mechanism of Pakistan’s nuclear programme,” he added.
Referring to statements of the US President, Chaudhry averred that such a statement could not have come during the tenure of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. “However, the current coalition government, whose members have a common interest of protecting their self-interests, are prone to blackmail by the foreign powers. Since Biden made the remarks on Pakistan’s nuclear assets, only the PTI was actively raising the issue and condemning the statement; however, till now the government is silent on the matter,” he added.
He maintained that this government did not come into power through elections; “in fact, the present rulers formed the government through an auction and now they are recovering the auction money”, and added that during their foreign tours both Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari were busy in photo shoots. “The US President made the remarks while keeping in view the irresponsible behaviour of our leadership on foreign tours. They have no respect in the international community. Hence, this government is not fit to protect the national interests of the country,” he added.
“The American government should know that our leadership may be weak, but not 220 million Pakistanis, and hence, it should not adopt an aggressive approach against us. As PTI Chairman Imran Khan in the past said, we want friendly relations on an equal basis with the US and not based on the master-slavery equation,” he added.
Talking about the by-elections (taking place today), the former federal minister was confident of winning all the seats.
On this occasion, former federal minister Hammad Azhar said that before making the remarks on Pakistan’s nuclear assets, Biden should know that Pakistan is in 19th place and India is in 20th place in the nuclear safety index while Australia is on the top slot and not America. “Moreover, Pakistan showed the most visible improvement on the index in 2020,” he added.
He categorically stated that Pakistan will not make any compromise on its nuclear programme and that the people of Pakistan are very sensitive on this issue.
He observed that Pakistan’s economy was in very bad shape; “business community cannot find dollars on the market rates to clear import bills and they were asked squared it with their export proceeds”. “Hence, our pending import bills based on letters of credit were piling up; this is a very dangerous situation, as it will further deplete our foreign reserves after clearing the import bills,” he added.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022