Daily Times

Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General (DG) Major General Asif Ghafoor Tuesday said that Pakistan wanted to see peace beyond its borders, especially in Afghanistan.

He was talking to a group of Pakistan-based foreign journalists wherein he briefed them about the security situation and ongoing stability operations in the country, an ISPR statement said. “Matters related to Pak-Afghan border and situation along Line of Control (LoC) were also discussed,” said the statement.

The DG ISPR told the foreign correspondents that Pakistan’s security situation had largely improved due to “successful clearance operations”, adding that the country was now heading towards stability.

“Having restored peace [at home,] Pakistan wishes to see peace beyond borders especially [in] Afghanistan,” the statement quoted the military media wing’s director general as saying. BBC correspondent Secunder Kermani, who was among the journalists present at the meeting, shared other details from the interaction on Twitter. According to Kermani, when asked whether the Pakistan Army was in direct touch with the Afghan Taliban regarding the peace process, Maj Gen responded that it was the “intelligence services” of any country that maintained such contacts. However, Maj Gen Ghafoor added that Pakistan’s influence [on the Afghan Taliban] was no longer “as effective as it was [in] 1979″, according to the BBC correspondent.

Kermani said the ISPR chief had stated that he [Ghafoor] was not aware if a delegation from the Taliban’s political office in Qatar had arrived in Pakistan, as was reported by some foreign news outlets.

According to the ISPR press release, Maj Gen Ghafoor during the meeting said that the international community saw Pakistan through their reporters based in Pakistan and that he expected the foreign journalists to highlight improving peace and stability in Pakistan, which offers economic opportunities for foreign investors”.

“Media has a very important role to project the true positivity of Pakistan,” he said during the interaction. Kermani said that the ISPR DG was also asked about the notices reportedly sent to a number of critics of the military by Twitter, saying the microblogging site had received “official correspondence” that the critics’ accounts violate Pakistan’s laws.

In his response, Ghafoor said the military had made “no complaint to Twitter” regarding such accounts, according to Kermani.

However, “He [Ghafoor] did say that other agencies like the FIA, for example, may have made the complaints but he had no knowledge of that,” the BBC journalist wrote.

Published in Daily Times, December 5^th 2018.