Former minister for interior Ahsan Iqbal on Thursday lashed out at the PTI-led government, claiming that it was "running a propaganda against Pakistan abroad".

The PML-N leader made these comments a day after Prime Minister Imran Khan's visit to Malaysia where the premier had mentioned that the newly formed government in Islamabad has found itself in a situation where it was facing "unprecedented debt".

Prime Minister Khan, while addressing a joint press conference with Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, also said that the nation had elected his government and given them [PTI] the mandate of ending corruption.

"We fear that this propaganda being run by the government will negatively impact the efforts made by our government over the past five years," Iqbal said while addressing the media in Karachi today.

A similar allegation was made by PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Thursday, who said: "When PM Khan speaks [about Pakistan] abroad, he forgets that he is representing the nation there."

"Imran Khan is facing a lot of problems within and outside Pakistan, which is why he wants his political opponents to be demonised," added the PPP leader while addressing a press conference in in Gilgit-Baltistan.

CPEC

"I was the minister in-charge of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and I challenge Imran Khan to use the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) to bring weight to his claims that CPEC projects were not transparent. Tell us where corruption took place in CPEC projects," Iqbal prodded during his talk today.

"When you [Imran Khan] went to China, you praised the CPEC projects greatly, you said that the energy projects under CPEC are going to help Pakistan greatly. However, here [in Pakistan] you stood in the assembly and flung mud on the project we had started under it."

"Who do you stand with? Are you with Pakistan and CPEC or are you with this nation's opponents who want to make the project controversial so that it fails.

"Our hands are clean and we will not be scared away by your threats and if you think that you will be able to hide your own incompetence behind the veil of our arrests, then you are wrong.

"A man who had not even run a union council has been made the prime minister through a conspiracy and we will prove to the nation that an inexperienced person will remain an anaari (inexperienced)," Iqbal continued.

"Do not be afraid, we do not want to topple your government; in fact we want you to expose your incompetence fully to the world.

"You have your time; deliver and show your worth to the world," Iqbal concluded.