Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: With Panama case dangling over his head, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif seeks immediate backing from the Trump administration to mitigate the political pressure both from inside and outside the country.

Sources told Daily Times that spokesman to the prime minister, Musadiq Malik, is in New York for the last several weeks to meet important personalities in the new administration. The spokesman had some connections with Wilbur Ross, picked as commerce secretary by US President Donald Trump. Ross is a billionaire, who made his fortune by buying bankrupt companies and, later, selling them after improving their operations.

Malik is expected to visit Washington in the next couple of days and continue lobbying on behalf of the prime minister. Sources said Nawaz was not satisfied with the performance of Pakistan’s Embassy in the US.

The obsession of Pakistani rulers to win the backing of the new US administration took an ugly turn when the Pakistani authorities leaked a conversation between the prime minster and the US president. A statement, then issued, from the PM House exactly quoted the US president in a flowery language which annoyed the US administration.

The US media had also made fun of the Pakistani government saying the contents of the conversation should not have been leaked. Former White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, then stated: “It’s entirely inappropriate for the Pakistani government to release what an American president-elect says in the course of a phone call.”

“So, for them to do it is an entire breach of diplomatic protocol and tradition. And if they had done that to me, I would be on the phone right now with their press secretary, chewing him out. The ambassador would be on the phone with their ambassador, chewing the ambassador out. And up and down the chain,” Mr Fleischer added.

“Readouts of phone calls between world leaders are usually written safely in order to protect leaders from incidental backlash – like the one the Trump team put out,” CNN then commented.

The Washington Post called the Pakistani release “a surprisingly candid read.” The New York Times called it “a bizarre conversation.”

The Forbes magazine described Mr Trump’s comments as “cozy, expansive, even flattering.”