Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Major General Athar Abbas has said that unwarranted criticism of the Pakistan Army by local and international media would be foiled, as it was causing serious harm to the country.
Talking to state-run PTV, Maj Gen Athar said defence and national security institutions were the backbone of the country and the damage to these institutions would be the loss of the nation and the motherland. Quoting a report published in The New York Time and Washington Post, he said, “The entire statement was fabricated with malicious intent, and COAS Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani never said that Pakistan had mortgaged itself to the US.” The NYT published a story in the name of the ISPR on June 15, titled Pakistan’s Chief of Army fights to keep his job, had claimed on the basis of notes of a participant of a session at the National Defence University addressed by Gen Kayani that the army chief had acknowledged that the country had mortgaged itself to the US. The participant was not identified in the news report. The ISP DG said: “We have the recorded video proof and transcript of the whole address of General Ashfaq Kayani.” He said the ISPR, with the help of the Ministry of Information, took up the case against the local correspondent for his irresponsible reporting and cancelled his visa, but the resident editor and foreign correspondent editor of the newspaper in person came to Pakistan and apologised to the ISPR. “There has been a flurry of reports in US media particularly, New York Times and Washington Post, witch are rivals but working on the same agenda by casting a negative light on the military by questioning its sincerity in the fight against militancy. The NYT story was a baseless report which was seen by the ISPR as a continuation of the campaign against the army both at the national and international level,” he said. Maj Gen Athar said one needed to understand that there were hidden hands which were supporting, funding and fuelling in manipulating the public opinion that there was a wide gap between the army and the nation.
