Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Secretary General Omar Ayub Khan has said that they have conveyed their concerns and issues to US Ambassador to Pakistan Donald Blome.
The statement came after a four-member PTI delegation headed by Omar and comprising party chairman Gohar Ali Khan, Asad Qaiser and Raoof Hasan met US envoy Blome in Islamabad.
The PTI leader said that his party told the US ambassador that they would not tolerate foreign interference in the country’s internal affairs.
The US ambassador, through the Foreign Office, requested for the meeting, the PTI leader said, adding that a political officer was also present during the meeting.
It is pertinent to mention here that PTI founder Imran Khan had earlier blamed Washington for overthrowing his government in April 2022. Imran was ousted from power after losing a no-confidence vote that the PTI founder alleged was engineered by the US by colluding with the then-opposition parties.
The cipher controversy first emerged on March 27, 2022, when Khan — less than a month before his ouster in April 2022 — while addressing a public rally waved a letter before the crowd, claiming that it was a cipher from a foreign nation that had conspired with his political rivals to topple the PTI government.
He had alleged that Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Affairs Donald Lu had sought his removal in a meeting with the then-Pakistan ambassador to the US Asad Majeed.Lu, however, had rubbished Khan’s cipher “conspiracy theory” and called it “complete falsehood”.
After months of allegations, the ousted premier turned his guns towards the former army chief General (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa, holding him responsible for the “conspiracy” which resulted in his ouster from power.
Talking to journalists after his meeting with the US ambassador today, Omar, also the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, said: “Matters related to military courts and cases against the PTI founder and other leaders of the party were discussed with the US envoy.”
In January this year, a special court established under the Official Secrets Act handed down 10 years imprisonment to the PTI founder and Shah Mehmood Qureshi 10 years imprisonment in the high-profile cypher case.
