Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Saturday he was \u201ctaken aback\u201d after the Foreign Office (FO) issued a statement distancing itself from the controversy surrounding the supposed inclusion of columnist Shama Junejo in Pakistan\u2019s delegation for a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting.<\/p>\n
On September 25, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had addressed a UNSC session on artificial intelligence. However, photos from his speech had spread like wildfire on social media platform X as users had pointed to Junejo sitting in the background and shared several screenshots from her Twitter (now X) timeline from several years ago, expressing support for Israel.<\/p>\n
Following social media furore, Asif said on X that Junejo\u2019s presence at the session was at the FO\u2019s discretion. For its part, the FO clarified that she was not listed in the official letter of credence for the Pakistan delegation to the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session.<\/p>\n
The matter came up during Geo News programme \u2018Naya Pakistan\u2019 today, where Asif was asked whether he was \u201ctaken aback\u201d by the FO\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was taken aback, rather I was a bit disturbed that such people could be with the delegation whom no one owns later,\u201d Asif replied.<\/p>\n
He further clarified people getting photographed with him abroad was not unusual and while Junejo, too, had a photograph with him a hotel lobby, he did not know her.<\/p>\n
The defence minister reiterated that he was \u201ctaken aback\u201d after he saw Junejo with the delegation but he did not ask anyone about her presence.<\/p>\n
When asked whether she was Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif\u2019s speech writer and had written the prime minister\u2019s speech at the UNGA, Asif replied in the negative. He clarified that according to the information he had, Junejo did not have any official position, be it of an adviser or a special assistant.<\/p>\n
Asif\u2019s and FO\u2019s clarifications on X
\nEarlier, Asif had clarified on X that he had given the speech instead of PM Shehbaz at the UNSC session as the latter had other engagements; the premier has been attending the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).<\/p>\n
\u201cThis woman or whoever sat behind me was and is at the discretion of the Foreign Office,\u201d Asif said.<\/p>\n
The defence minister said that for the past 60 years, he had an emotional attachment and personal commitment to the Palestine cause. He added that he had Palestinian friends and colleagues while working in Abu Dhabi and was still in contact with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy views on Gaza are clear and I express them openly,\u201d he said, expressing his hatred for Israel and Zionism.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is this woman, why is she with the delegation, and why was she seated behind me? Only the FO can answer these questions. It is not appropriate for me to respond on their behalf,\u201d Asif said.<\/p>\n
He said that his account on X was a testament to the fact that his relationship with Palestine was part of his faith.<\/p>\n
Subsequently, in a post on X late on Friday night, the FO said that it had noted the queries regarding \u201cthe seating of a certain individual behind the defence minister at a recent meeting of the UNSC\u201d. The FO did not explicitly name Junejo.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo clarify, the individual in question was not listed in the official letter of credence for the Pakistan delegation to the 80th UNGA session, signed by the deputy prime minister and foreign minister,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs such, her seating behind the defence minister did not have the approval of the deputy prime minister\/foreign minister,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Junejo also took to X and posted screenshots of previous posts where she had called out Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cYouthias are calling me a Zionist when for the past two years I have tweeted about Gaza almost daily, calling [Israeli PM] Netanyahu a war criminal and showing Israeli atrocities,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The term \u201cyouthia\u201d is a derogatory term commonly used as a slur for PTI supporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce again, this entire campaign has been launched against me because they only fear me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Uproar
\nFormer human rights minister Shireen Mazari had stated that one could not sit behind a minister in the UNSC or the United Nations General Assembly unless they were identified as an official representative of the government.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo who allowed this to happen and why? Is there a covert policy agenda at work viz rogue entity Israel, Bagram base, Abraham Accords? GoP needs to come clean \u2014 who is responsible?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Saturday he was \u201ctaken aback\u201d after the Foreign Office (FO) issued a statement distancing itself from the controversy surrounding the supposed inclusion of columnist Shama Junejo in Pakistan\u2019s delegation for a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting. On September 25, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had addressed a UNSC session […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12228,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12229,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12227\/revisions\/12229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}