LAHORE: National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq says the parliament will be taken into confidence today (Tuesday) on the Kulbhushan Jadhav case.

“The attorney-general has been invited to brief the MPs through the Parliamentary Committee for National Security on the efforts the government has so far made and the next likely steps regarding the Kulbhushan Jadhav case so that the parliament may be taken into confidence in this regard,” Mr Sadiq told reporters here on Monday.

He lamented that the opposition criticised the legal team because the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had stayed hanging of Jadhav. He called for forging unity on the issues of national security.

Answering a question about the Arab-US summit in Riyadh, the speaker said using the Islamic Military Alliance against Iran could be a wish of US President Donald Trump but not of the alliance.

He said the government was against any step that could hit neighbouring Iran, while the conference held with regard to Yemen had already decided it in principle that Pakistan would not fight any other country’s war on a foreign soil. He said attending the Arab Islamic summit conference didn’t necessarily mean that Islamabad was against Teheran.

“I assure you that [the government] won’t become a part of a war against any Muslim country and that elected representatives also hold the same opinion.”

The speaker said the country had so far offered the sacrifices of its 65,000 citizens and army men in the fight against terrorism, and not recognising these sacrifices by Trump during the Riyadh summit reflected the thinking of the US president.

“Not recognising the sacrifices is rather a proof of the fact that the country on path of progress is a thorn in the side of the enemies. What pinches our enemies most is our being a nuclear state,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2017