Islamabad: A year after Prime Minister Imran Khan described slain al-Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden as a “martyr”, Pakistan’s information minister clarified that it was “spoken” on Sunday”. It was slippery”. On June 25 last year, Khan told parliament that US security forces entered Pakistan and killed bin Laden without informing the government, after which everyone started abusing the country.
Khan had said, “I believe that there is no country which supported the war on terrorism and it has to face embarrassment. Pakistan was openly held responsible for America’s failure in Afghanistan.
He told lawmakers, “It was an embarrassment for Pakistanis all over the world that Americans came and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad… martyred him. After this, the whole world started abusing us. Our allies came inside our country and killed someone without informing us. And 70 thousand Pakistanis were killed in the US war on terrorism.”
His statement was criticized by the opposition and the media. Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist, was killed by US Navy SEALs in Abbottabad in May 2011 in a secret military operation. Referring to Khan’s controversial remarks, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry on Sunday in Geo News’ program ‘Jirga’ said, “It was a slip of the tongue. He made it clear.”
The controversy resurfaced last week, when Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi refused to call Osama bin Laden a terrorist in an interview with Afghanistan’s Tolo News.
The Dawn newspaper wrote, “Qureshi could have used this opportunity to clarify that Pakistan considers the slain al-Qaeda leader a terrorist. However, his statement sent a wrong message to the world.”
The information minister said that last year the spokesperson of Prime Minister Imran Khan had issued a clarification following the statement.
