ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Hina Rabbani Khar on Tuesday lashed out at the Prime Minister Imran Khan for inaccurately assuming that Japan borders with Germany, and said that an elected prime minister “has made us a laughing stock for everyone”.
Addressing a National Assembly session, she said that “it was not [a] slip of the tongue” while adding that the premier has distorted both geography and history for all of us.”
She went on to say that “the honourable prime minister went on to explain how Germany and Japan are neighbours and shared a border after the horrific Second World War. Historically, they both [Germany and Japan] were on the same side but the prime minister is telling us otherwise”.
The former foreign minister further observed that Japan is located in East Asia while Germany is located in Europe.
In her response, Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari said that “only half of the [prime minister’s] sentence was repeatedly being talked about and taken out of context.
“It was a slip of the tongue. The prime minister wanted to say Germany and France and not Germany and Japan,” she said.
“The next part of his sentence was that those who killed people in Ormara came from Iran,” she said while stressing that “the entire sentence should be heard”.
She further said that if we want to eliminate terrorism we need to first tackle the banned organisations on both sides of the border. Both Iran and Pakistan need to tackle them.
Meanwhile, Minister for Postal Services Murad Saeed hit back at Khar and said that “the same Hussain Haqqani who now promotes an anti-Pakistan agenda, was appointed sent to the US as Pakistan ambassador by your party”.
Earlier during a meeting with a delegation in Tehran on Monday, the premier, while giving an example of France and Germany who joined hands to lay the foundation of the European Union (EU), mistakenly confused France with Japan.
“The more trade you have with each other your ties automatically become stronger…Germany and Japan killed millions of their civilians until after the Second World War when they both decided to have joint industries on their border regions,” the prime minister was quoted as saying.
France and Germany together laid the foundation of the EU, which collectively helped improve the economy of the entire region.