LONDON: After fierce criticism over omission of Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav from the interview of Pakistan’s Finance Minister Asad Umar, the BBC HARDtalk has clarified that the portion was deleted due to technical reasons.
In an interview aired on Wednesday, Asad Umar had talked about on a range of issues regarding national economy, India’s role in Balochistan mess, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Pak-Saudi ties amid killing of Jamal Khashoggi and others.
When asked, during the interview about the external forces operating in Pakistan’s Southwest, the minister said it is India which is creating problems and the security forces have arrested Kulbhushan Jadhav who revealed Indian hand in the region.
‘There is concerted efforts led by India to damage CPEC. People of Balochistan have elected a government that fully stands by CPEC and have also shown loyalty with Pakistan,’ he further added.
This portion of finance minister much talked-about interview was not aired on the BBC, which invited criticism.
Federal Minister Shireen Mazari said ‘shameful how BBC censored and chopped off Asad's mention of Indian spymaster Jhadav! Typical bias of BBC!’.
Responding to the allegations of bias, BBS said: “The reason Kulbhushan Jadhav’s name was deleted from the TV version of the HARDtalk interview with Asad Umar has a simple technical explanation. The recorded interview was too long for our broadcast slot and so had to be edited. This was done separately for radio and TV.”
“His name was omitted from the TV version. This was not an act of censorship, but clearly confusion has been caused, so we are happy to restore that short section to the TV broadcast and we’ll give the new programme an extra airing tonight as well as tomorrow morning.”
‘Hope is very much in the air’
To a question, the minister said when the current government came into power, it was a well-known fact that Pakistan needed some kind of bailout.
Therefore, the government had to go around to the friendly countries to seek some kind of immediate assistance to support the reeling economy, he added.
“Hope is very much in the air,” he added.
Pak-Saudi ties
To a question regarding Saudi Arabia’s assistance, the minister said, “I would be happy to be ashamed of standing out with a country with which we have close cooperation… may be the western leaders should be ashamed of themselves talking about freedom, talking about democracy and reaching out in the same Saudi pockets to take billions of dollars of business deals and the leader of Western world Donald Trump stands up and openly says that I am getting very much business from Saudi Arabia so there is no need to worry about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi.”
“We are just consistent in the bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia which remain the same regardless of which government is in the power,” he added.
He said Pakistan’s relationship with Saudi Arabia goes back half a century and it had got nothing to do with Yemen or Khushoggi.
CPEC
With respect to investment under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Balochistan, the minister said Balochistan government was eager to enhance investment in the province under CPEC.
He said Pakistan’s debts payable to China were only less than 10 percent of its total debts while the US was the largest deter of China with over $1.3 trillion.