A six-day meeting of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is starting today with proposal to put Pakistan on grey-list of financing militant outfits is on agenda.
The meeting to be continued from February 18-23 will discuss important issues related to global financial system and contribute to security. Almost 700 delegation from around the world including United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions will take part in the meeting.
FATF is an inter-governmental organisation founded in 1989 to monitor money laundering across the globe. After 9-11 however it has majorly focused on preventing monetary assistance to the terrorist and militant outfits.
In second week of February, US moved a motion to include Pakistan in grey-list for allegedly financing militant organisations. In November 2017, International Cooperation Review Group in Argentina moved a resolution to call for attention on Pakistan's financial assistance to banned outfits like Lashkr-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Jamaat-ud-Dawa.
Pakistan's defacto Finance Minister Miftah Ismail told media that US has moved motion against Pakistan which was later joined by United Kingdom, France and Germany.
According to sources out of 35 permanent members of FATF, only China is expected to support Pakistan. Meanwhile, Pakistan has started a diplomatic effort to gain support to remove this motion. In this regard Ismail visited Germany, Netherlands and Belgium last week to gain support of these countries. Meanwhile, power minister Awais Laghari visited Malaysia in this regard.
Last week, During a press briefing US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert hinted that US has moved the resolution and would come up for discussion during FATF meeting.
"We are now working with US, UK, Germany and France for nomination to be removed from the agenda," said Miftah Ismail, while talking to Reuters.
