ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday called slain Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden a "martyr", which drew criticism from the opposition, saying a terrorist behind massacre of thousands cannot be called a "shaheed".

Speaking in the National Assembly about the events that embarrassed Pakistan, the prime minister said that the country faced embarrassment by taking part in America's war on terror.

"There are two instances that humiliated Pakistan the most. First, the Americans came and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad...martyred him. What happened after that? The entire world hurled abuses at us. Our own ally [US] entered our country and killed someone without even telling us about it. It was this big a humiliation," he said.

The prime minister said that the US was carrying out drone strikes inside Pakistan, which the Pakistani government at the time said, it opposed.

"But when an American senator asked former US military chief Admiral Mike Mullen at a Senate hearing why drone attacks were being carried out despite the Pakistani government's objection, Mullen replied that "we are carrying out the drone attacks with the permission of the Pakistani government", he added.

Prime Minister Khan said that it was his party's consistent foreign policy that its government would not participate in the American war, and would only take part in peace talks.

Today, the country is not fighting somebody else's war, and the relationship with the US is based on trust, he added.

"No one is humiliating us there anymore. Donald Trump has always given respect whenever we have met. In fact, he requests our help in bringing peace to Afghanistan," the prime minister said, adding that Pakistan's role in the Afghan peace talks was being widely acknowledged today.

"Osama bin Laden was a terrorist, and our PM called him a martyr. He was behind massacre of thousands," said Khawaja Asif, the parliamentary leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the National Assembly.

In his address, the prime minister also defended his government's response to the coronavirus crisis, saying there had been no confusion or contradiction in official policies since the start of the pandemic.

"They say again and again that there was confusion ... if there was one country whose government did not have confusion, it was ours," he added.

He remarked: "India's reports are in front of the world".

He said the government had imposed a lockdown to curb the spread of the Covid-19 when the country had only 26 cases and no deaths.

At that point, Imran added, the provinces had "reacted themselves" because lockdown had become a worldwide phenomenon, and the country did not have "centralised planning".

But he said, he and his team, feared from day one, that the lockdown model used by Western countries and China could not be applied in Pakistan because the situation in the subcontinent was "very different".

Addressing the opposition benches, he challenged their lawmakers to point out one statement that had inconsistency, since the lockdown was first announced on March 13.

"I constantly talked about two things: if you have the population of Singapore, if you have $50,000 per capita income [and], if you have natural social distancing, then curfew is the way to go."

"But, I also talked about how the restrictions would impact the poor people based on our conditions," he added.

Recalling that the government did not have any data on available ventilators and intensive care staff initially, the prime minister lauded the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) for collecting all the information on a daily basis, and looking at trends with expert help due to which "our decision making was free of inconsistencies".

The prime minister said the government had opened the construction sector first, and now the whole world was saying that "there are more negative effects of lockdown as compared to its impact on controlling the virus."

He added that his government was the first to talk about a "smart" lockdown.

"This is the hallmark of our NCOC; look at our population and how we have navigated this hurdle." At the same time, the premier told the nation that they have a "very difficult situation" in front of them.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020