ISLAMABAD - Former federal minister and PPP central leader Raja Pervez Ashraf has said that contradictions in Mansoor Ijaz’s statements had totally exposed the farce and elements, who agitated the ‘so-called’ memo case in a desperate bid to upset the political applecart before the Senate elections, which was bound to give a qualitative political edge to the PPP government.
Now that Senate elections have been held successfully and contradictions in Mansoor Ijaz’s statements were also exposed, it was the moral responsibility of all those elements to apologise to the people for dragging them in a reckless political controversy that only cast dark shadows on the national politics, Raja Pervez Ashraf said in a statement issued here on Sunday. He said as the matter was before the commission, he would not like to comment on the proceedings before it. However, he added, it was worth recalling that Mansoor, who started by vociferously claiming in media interviews that the then ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani had ‘dictated’ the memo to him and that he acted only as a ‘stenographer’ and typist, had now changed his stance and claimed that he himself wrote the first draft. But when confronted with the obvious contradiction, Ijaz once again changed his stance and claimed that while he wrote the memo himself, he did so under Haqqani’s instructions, Raja Pervez said.
Raja Pervez said Ijaz also failed to explain why he was so keen to take dictation from Haqqani and acted as his steno when he was unable to reach out to Haqqani who, according to him, was not accessible to him. Continuing, he said when Mansoor failed to provide hard evidence in support of his claim to expose the conspiracy he began talking of phone calls, which he claimed had taken place between him and Haqqani. When this claim too was countered Ijaz then asserted that he received a phone call from Haqqani on either the 15th or 16th of October from an anonymous number, Raja Pervez said.
It was surprising that the man who claimed to possess incontrovertible evidence in the form of telephone bills and blackberry data neither recalled whether the call was made to Haqqani on 15th or 16th October nor had any evidence about the identity of the caller, Raja Pervez said.
It was ridiculous to first point to an anonymous number on the phone bill and then claim that the call had been made by the former Ambassador without any evidence.
Raja Pervez said that previously Mansoor claimed that he would not go back on his negative assertions about the country’s premier intelligence agency and would stick to his stand about it before any inquiry commission.
But now he wants the people to believe that his misperceptions about the agency dissolved into thin air after he met its chief. Mansoor also claimed initially the so called memo was approved by the President but now has gone back on it too and admitted that he could not say whether it had been approved by the President or not. These contradictions are enough to knock the bottom out of the farce, Raja Pervez Ashraf said.