Pakistan has been given a stern message by almost all FATF member countries, barring Turkey and Malaysia, to honour the remaining 13 action plan items by the June 2020 FATF plenary. This would include conviction and prosecution of top leaders of all terrorist organisations, as required under the FATF action plan.
Indian diplomatic sources said Pakistan has long been trying to politicise the technical process of FATF, something that is proven beyond doubt from the recent statements of leadership of Turkey and Malaysia. FATF members have been requested to take note of this.
Only recently, Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan had declared Turkey’s intent to help Pakistan keep off the FATF blacklist. Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohammad too praised Pakistan’s efforts to implement the FATF action plan.
While a meeting of the International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG), sub-group of the FATF, had on Tuesday recommended to retain Pakistan on greylist, a final decision will be taken on Friday when the FATF takes up Pakistan’s case.
Sources said Pakistan, despite its best attempts, will remain on grey list of FATF.
The onus, say sources, is on Pakistan to ensure that they act on FATF parameters to avoid being blacklisted in future.
Incidentally, Pakistan has been busy putting out false and selective information on FATF proceedings through its own media to mislead the public. These leaks include claims that there are no takers for India’s propaganda against Pakistan at FATF and that the Indian side was snubbed twice on Tuesday when it called to move Pakistan to the blacklist. It claimed no country remotely sided with India.
Of course, a diplomatic source said that Pakistan was indulging in wrong and selective media leaks, as in the past, in a desperate attempt to mislead its public.
Pakistan has also tried to claim that that India was lying when it said Pakistan has 130 UN-designated terrorist leaders on its soil. It argued that only nine such terrorists were present in Pakistan.
Pakistan has told its media that Indian side tried to rake up the issue of missing terrorists Masood Azhar, Dawood Ibrahim and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and also the rising terrorist incidents in India by Pak-based terror groups.
India, Pakistan has told its media, was also discouraged by the chair and other countries for calculated misleading leaks in a section of its media pertaining to FATF given that it is a secret process.
