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According to media reports, Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan has called for the dismissal of US Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asia Donald Lu due to his “sheer arrogance and terrible manners.”
Mr Lu is essential to Imran Khan’s assertions about a US-backed regime-change plot that brought down his government last month via a no-confidence vote.
He accused Mr Lu of informing Pakistan’s previous ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed, that failing to remove Imran Khan via a no-confidence vote would have “consequences” for Pakistan and vice versa.
Imran Khan, Chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, claims that the threat was issued before the no-confidence resolution was tabled, triggering a chain of events that led to his resignation as local abettors and conspirators joined the alleged conspiracy.
According to Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, Imran Khan reiterated his charges in an exclusive appearance on CNN’s Connect the World on Monday, lashing out against Donald Lu and asking for his dismissal.
“Imagine telling the ambassador of a country with 220 million people that you want to get rid of your Prime Minister,” he remarked.
When asked why he hadn’t made his claims public earlier, despite being so “specific” about their details, the cricketer-turned-politician explained that he had presented the cypher containing details of the meeting between Mr Lu and Pakistan’s ambassador to his Cabinet, which was later presented in a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC).
A cypher is a coded message given by embassies to their respective countries.
Becky Anderson, the show’s host, pushed back against Imran Khan, asking him if he had called the US president (Joe Biden) or state secretary (Antony Blinken) about the situation.
Imran Khan did not respond, instead stating that the NSC meeting had resolved to submit a demarche and that a protest had been registered to the US in both Pakistan and Washington.
In response to a query about Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-stance Zardari’s on Pakistan-US relations, and whether Mr Khan believed that a good bilateral relationship was in Pakistan’s best interests, he said: “I had a great working relationship with the Trump administration. It wasn’t until the Biden administration arrived that it intersected with what was going on in Afghanistan, and for some reason – which I still don’t understand – they never contacted me.”
Becky Anderson said the US had “rubbed out” the idea that it was participating in a regime change in Pakistan, and she asked Imran Khan whether he “genuinely” believed his assertion that there was a foreign plan to destabilise his administration.
Imran Khan responded by saying that the US embassy had been calling and meeting with disgruntled party members even before Lu and Pakistan’s then-ambassador to the US met.
“What were they (US officials) meeting for? They were the first to jump ship, and they were the ones who paid millions of dollars apiece to buy my other National Assembly members who jumped ship later… Why would the US embassy care about our party’s backbenchers?” Mr. Khan stated.
Becky Anderson questioned the former prime minister during the interview on his trip to Russia, which coincided with the news of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, adding that “the optics didn’t and don’t look good, do they?”
“This trip had been planned for quite some time, and all parties in Pakistan were on board. The military wanted Russian hardware, we needed oil, and a gas pipeline had been arranged for the previous six years before my government arrived… how could I have known that the day I arrived in Moscow, President (Vladimir) Putin would decide to go into Ukraine?” Mr Khan spoke out.
When asked if he regretted the trip, Imran Khan replied he would have regretted it if he had heard about the invasion beforehand and still chosen to go ahead, according to Pakistan’s Dawn.
