Pakistan: No conspiracy involved in cipher received from US

Director-General of Pakistan's Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR), Major General Babar Iftikhar said that there was no evidence of the conspiracy in the cipher received from the US.

Speaking on a Pakistani channel programme, Major General Babar Iftikhar said that the statements of services chiefs and the DG ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) clearly showed that there was no evidence of a conspiracy.

Iftikhar further said that their stance was based on the intelligence information and their opinion. "A detailed briefing on the issue was given which was based on the intelligence information," he added.

Commenting on Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Asad Umar's statement, where he termed the ISPR DG statement a political one, Iftikhar said that it was a clarification on behalf of the services chiefs of Pakistan.

The ISPR DG said that he was a spokesman for the services chiefs of Pakistan and he was supposed to clarify things on their behalf. "There was nothing political and it was a clarification on behalf of the services chiefs," he said.

The military spokesman said the institution would provide every possible assistance to a judicial commission, or any other body, constituted by the government to know the facts behind the cipher to bring the issue to a logical conclusion. He rejected the impression that the institution would oppose the formation of a judicial forum to know the facts behind the cipher.

Major General Babar Iftikhar said, adding that it was unfortunate to see baseless propaganda against the armed forces and making its leadership a target of criticism.

The military spokesperson said the Pakistan Army had played a key role in keeping Pakistan on the grey list of FATF and prevented it from going to the blacklist as a special cell on the request of the government, headed by the Director-General Military Operations (DGMO), was set up at the GHQ with the coordination of 30 different agencies and government departments and a mechanism was devised, The News International reported.

"The cell suggested measures against money-laundering and terrorism financing and in the light of its suggestions, legislation on the issues was made in the parliament. Because of efforts of the cell, Rs 58 billion laundered money was also recovered," he added.