ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar told the National Assembly on Wednesday that a recent $1.5 billion ‘gift’ received from an unspecified friendly country — but most probably from Saudi Arabia — came through normal banking channels and was without conditions that could involve Pakistan in a proxy war in any Arab country like Syria.

But what he called his categorical statement on behalf of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that Pakistan would not send troops or weapons to the area, his assurance avoided to address fears expressed by critics about the possibility of recruitment of Pakistani citizens as so-called volunteers to help Syrian rebels seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad or to aid the Bahraini ruler quell dissidents.

Initially, Mr Dar explained the arrival of $1.5 billion as a “totally friendly gift” deposited in the State Bank of Pakistan in two in instalments -- $750 million on Feb 19 and the remainder on March 7 – from donors who he said did not want to be identified and its impact on the national economy like an appreciation of the rupee against the US dollar.

But after three opposition parties and a government ally voiced fears about the possibility of hidden strings attached to the amount — which he said carried no interest and was not to be repaid — that the minister, as “a privy to this grant”, offered to make a statement on behalf of the prime minister, now visiting abroad, that there were “no conditions” attached and that neither Pakistani troops nor ammunitions would be sent out.

“At no cost will the PML-N government send Pakistani forces to any other country for cooperation,” Mr Dar claimed, adding: “After this, our colleagues should feel satisfied.”

“It is totally a friendly gift as they had done in 1999,” he said, recalling what he called $2 billion worth of petrol and diesel received by Pakistan under a Saudi oil facility to help Pakistan tide over international sanctions imposed after its May 1998 nuclear tests in retaliation against similar tests conducted by India.

That remark was an implied admission by the finance minister that the new gift also came from Saudi Arabia after he had refused to disclose the source of the amount, saying that whether it was “one or two” donors, it was from the same 26 countries that pledged contributions worth $6.235 billion from the Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FODP) forum formed in 2008 in the early days of the previous PPP-led coalition government but disbursed only $341 million.

“You saw a dream and we completed its ‘ta’beer’ (interpretation),” Mr Dar said, addressing himself to the PPP.

One of whose former finance ministers, Naveed Qamar, insisted the grant came from Saudi Arabia and warned of a “blowback” in Pakistan of any involvement in a proxy war just like the consequences of the Afghan conflict.

The finance minister said no addition to the present ‘gift’ was planned nor the government’s economic affairs division would pursue the unfulfilled pledges made from the Friends of Democratic Pakistan platform, while he assured the house that part of the new grant would be spent on extending the Islamabad-Lahore motorway to Karachi.

Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf vice chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi had demanded a categorical statement from either the prime minister or Defence Minister Khwaja Mohmmad Asif about any military strings attached to the gift, while Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s parliamentary leader Farooq Sattar said it was “incomprehensible for me” that the $1.5 billion gift could be without strings.

Mahmood Khan Achakzai, chief of the government-allied Pakhtunkhawa Milli Awami Party, said Pakistan should try to persuade Saudi Arabia and Turkey against taking sides in the Syrian civil war rather than itself getting involved and risk bad blood with “another neighbour”.