The US embassy on Thursday denied media reports that the country was pressurising Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz not to visit Pakistan to appear before the memo probe commission, as Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said Ijaz has not yet applied for a Pakistani visa.
The memo commission has fixed its next hearing for January 16 and has asked Mansoor Ijaz to appear to record his statement.
“We have not received a visa application by Mansoor Ijaz either at the High Commission in London or any other consulate,” Basit said in his weekly press briefing at the Foreign Office.
Some media reports on Thursday suggested that there was a possibility that Ijaz would cancel his visit to Islamabad because the US and some other influential quarters had been urging him not to travel to Pakistan.
Rejecting these reports, Ijaz said he would come to Pakistan but would not disclose his itinerary for security reasons. Earlier, Ijaz’s lawyer Akram Shaikh said he was unable to make contact with his client.
Zahid Bokhari, the lawyer for Pakistan’s former envoy to the US Husain Haqqani, said Ijaz’s reluctance to visit Pakistan had exposed his lies.
