LAHORE: Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari says that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said ‘Absolutely Not’ to the United States.

“Pakistan is an independent and sovereign country. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has told the US ‘Absolutely not’. Pakistan will not allow anyone to interfere in its internal matters,” the minister said in a statement here on Thursday.

She was talking with reference to the Trump team calling for the release of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) founder leader Imran Khan.

Bokhari said those (PTI leaders) who claimed they would free the country from American slavery were now begging the US for intervention.

“The prisoner in Adiala Jail (Imran Khan) is ready to beg anyone to secure an NRO (national reconciliation ordinance),” she said and added that the PTI was playing a drama of negotiations on one the hand while on the other, it was threatening to resort to civil disobedience.

The PTI’s leaders like Zulfi Bukhari, Shahbaz Gill and Shehzad Akbar were actively encouraging overseas Pakistanis on social media not to send remittances, Ms Bokhari said and added that overseas Pakistanis had rejected the mischief and the anti-country actions of the PTI by sending the highest-ever remittances in the history of Pakistan this year.

She said the prisoner in Adiala Jail who had been telling the nation for the past one-and-a-half years that he would free the country from the American slavery was now pleading with the US lobby to intervene in Pakistan.

“Some petty individuals, influenced by the Jewish lobby, are currently active in saving their pawns,” she alleged.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2024