Imran Khan’s foreign minister brings mixed feelings to the table
Imran Khan’s swearing-in ceremony took place two days ago. The world watched as a man who claims to usher in a new era for a nuclear-country assumed his responsibilities as the prime minister and announced his twenty-one member cabinet. A lot of people raised eyebrows when they realized that many members of the cabinet had held important positions under the military dictator Pervez Musharraf.
One name however that stood out for India was that of Imran Khan’s foreign minister and vice president of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Qureshi defeated his opposing leader with 93,497 votes to go on to win Multan’s NA-156 seat. Shah Mehmood was a member of the Pakistan National Assembly from 2002 to 2018 and has been the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan from 2008 to 2011.
Imran Khan’s foreign minister started his political career getting selected to the provincial assembly on a non-party basis during the time of Zia-ul-Haq. He then went on to serve under three different political parties. As far as India is concerned, Imran Khan’s foreign minister is associated with two major chapters that altered India Pakistan relations for the worse.
Qureshi was the foreign minister of Pakistan when 26/11 attacks had taken place. It was on the eve of these attacks that he and his Indian counterpart had addressed a joint press session after a long day of talks. It took everyone surprise when the Pakistani delegation did not cut short its visit even as the news of the heinous attacks broke out. The next day Qureshi was at the Indian Women’s Press Corps when he received a phone call from Pranab Mukherjee asking him to leave India.
Imran Khan’s foreign minister also carries the legacy of failed talks that led to a dreadful press conference where he accused India of human right violations in Kashmir. This happened when India’s then foreign minister S M Krishna visited Islamabad in 2010 in an attempt to mend the direly sour relations Pakistan.
Imran Khan’s foreign minister is known to be a hawk Kashmir and has a history of maintaining disastrous relations with Pakistan’s most important neighbor.
It was a chapter that was hailed as “Naya Pakistan” under “Kaptan Imran Khan” but the chapter has the stamp of many old faces from the disastrous past, Qureshi’s being the most prominent one.
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