Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan attends a bilateral meeting with United States President Donald Trump at the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland on January 21, 2020. ( REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst / File)
Pakistan has hired Texas-based Linden Strategies to lobby the Donald Trump administration ahead of a FATF meeting this month. But officials representing India say Islamabad cannot escape the gray list immediately.
- CNN-News18
- Last update: October 11, 2020 6:52 PM IST
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Pakistan now relies on US lobbying firms to get off the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) gray list as the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog meets virtually this month to decide the fate of Islamabad .
Government officials representing India at the FATF told News18 that the Pakistani government hired Texas-based Linden Strategies to lobby the Donald Trump administration. “Pakistan needs the support of 12 out of 39 countries for its name to be removed from the gray list. Only the United States controls a bloc of 20 countries,” said an official.
The Paris-based FATF is scheduled to meet October 21-23. Pakistan has been under pressure to test actions taken against UN-banned terrorists such as Maulana Masood Azhar, Hafiz Saeed, Zakir ur Rehman Lakhvi, as well as international terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Haqqani network.
The United States had previously rejected Pakistan’s accusations of acting against these individuals and organizations. The 2019 national terrorism reports from the US State Department had punched holes in a claim Pakistan made to the FATF earlier this year: that the terrorist Masood Azhar is “missing”.
The US report released just before the FATF kept Pakistan on the gray list said the country “did not take action against other known terrorists such as JeM founder and UN designated terrorist Masood Azhar and the ‘project manager ‘From the Mumbai attack in 2008, Sajid Mir, both of whom are believed to remain free in Pakistan.
The United States has accused Pakistan of continuing to act as a “safe harbor” for other terrorist groups focused on the region.
It is this assessment of the Trump administration that Pakistan is trying to change through lobbying firm Linden Strategies, which calls itself a “government relations and business development firm providing strategic analysis and advice to domestic and international clients. , including sovereign nations “.
The firm claims to be specialized in government relations, strategic communication, business consulting and political consulting with international clients.
However, Indian government officials who spoke to News18 were skeptical about whether the company will be able to deliver the desired results for Pakistan. “This appears to be another money-generating project for corrupt entities in Pakistan,” said an official.
A report in Hindustan Times He said Pakistan was eager to insist on measures taken by the Trump administration against terrorists. According to the report, Pakistan wants to establish that there is no hand of the deep state of Pakistan in al Qaeda and the Islamic state in Afghanistan; that LeT is a defunct organization whose leaders have been accused of terrorist financing; JeM’s key leaders are not in Pakistan; and that the country has successfully convicted four appointees and two other senior leaders, along with terrorist financing cases against 11 appointees and eight others.
India, however, has repeatedly denied these claims, demonstrating at the FATF how the leaders of JeM and LeT have changed hands from one family member to another. The Indian assessment is that Pakistan will not be able to escape the gray list anytime soon.
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