The government says an election will be held in October next year.
Karachi:
The director of Pakistan’s intelligence service accused former Prime Minister Imran Khan of asking the country’s powerful army to “illegally and unconstitutionally” support his government, in an unprecedented and scathing press conference. on Thursday.
The press conference led by the country’s powerful Director of Interagency Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant General Nadeem Anjum, comes after Khan stepped up his criticism of the military, accusing it of conspiring to remove him in April and support his opponents.
“(Khan’s criticism) is because the military and its chiefs refuse to do things that are illegal or unconstitutional,” Anjum said, adding that the military made a policy decision not to stand aside. politics, and thus refused Khan’s persistent demands.
The shadow ISI head, who rarely appears in public, did not specify what Khan’s request was.
A Pakistani Tehreek-e-Insaaf leader of Khan, Asad Umar, later denied any illegal requests made.
Pakistan’s military has long been considered the most powerful institution in the country, directly in power for more than three of the seven and a half decades since independence and at the forefront of setting security and foreign policy right away. even when the common people are in power.
Analysts say the military was behind Khan’s first rise to power as prime minister in 2018 – an allegation both have repeatedly denied – before being brought forward last year.
Anjum admits the military has made mistakes in the past, but an institutional decision was made recently to stay out of politics.
An opposition coalition voted Khan out of power in a parliamentary vote in April. Khan has since launched a political attack calling for a snap election. He announced he would hold a protest march from Lahore to Islamabad starting Friday.
The government says an election will be held in October next year.
Speaking alongside Anjum, army spokesman Lieutenant General Babar Iftikhar said the unusual step of getting the head of the spy agency to speak in public was taken because of a smear campaign against the army.
Anjum said Khan and Army Commander-in-Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa met recently in an effort to reduce tensions. In the words of the spy leader, Khan would meet with the military leadership in the “darkness of the night” to ask for favors and then attack the same people the next day.
He also said that, in March, as opposition pressure was mounting on Khan’s government, the then prime minister offered Bajwa a “lifetime extension” as commander-in-chief of the army. , but was rejected.
Khan’s assistant Fawad Chaudhry did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment on whether such an offer would be made.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
Featured video of the day
