ISLAMABAD - Pakistan yesterday rejected the Klaxon story on China's Wuhan Lab conducting alleged covert operations in Pakistan.

Foreign Office spokesperson Aisha Farooqui said that the report was “politically motivated and a fake story, composed of distortion of facts and fabrications that quote anonymous sources.”

She added that there was nothing secret about the Bio-Safety Level-3 (BSL-3) Laboratory of Pakistan referred to in the report.

“Pakistan has been sharing information about the facility with the States Parties to the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention in its submission of confidence building measures. The facility is meant for diagnostic and protective system improvement by Research and Development on emerging health threats, surveillance and disease outbreak investigation,” she elaborated.

Aisha Farooqui said that Pakistan strictly abides by its BTWC obligations and had been one of the most vocal supporters for a strong verification mechanism to ensure full compliance by the States Parties to the Convention.

“The attempt to cast aspersions about the facility is particularly absurd against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has highlighted the need for better preparedness in the areas of disease surveillance and control and international collaborations in that regard, consistent with Article X of BTWC,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Chinese embassy In Pakistan also strongly opposed the “fabricated story on China-Pakistan joint research on Biological weapon.”

The embassy tweeted: “It is totally irresponsible, vicious-intentioned to smear China and Sino-Pak relations. As a responsible nation, China always lives up to its obligations to BWC.”