ISLAMABAD: Advisor on Interior and Accountability Shahzad Akbar on Wednesday said that negotiations were underway with Britain to bring back former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to the country. Addressing a news conference along with Shahbaz Gill, he said Nawaz Sharif was a convicted person who went to Britain for medical treatment after giving an undertaking and never came back.

He said Pakistan had also written a letter to Britain seeking their assistance in this matter. Shahzad Akbar said the PML-N leader and former finance minister Ishaq Dar had been exposed in the recent BBC 'Hardtalk' interview.

The interview clearly showed why he had been declared an absconder, he added. The adviser on interior rejected the assertion made by Ishaq Dar that he has only one property in Lahore. Sharing details of his properties, he said the former finance minister had properties in Pakistan as well as in Dubai.

He said the British authorities had also been requested for the extradition of Ishaq Dar. He said the opposition parties had lost their importance in the national politics, and the PTI was the most popular party. The election in Gilgit-Baltistan is a proof to this, he added.

He said that the people were also not attending the public gatherings of the opposition parties in large numbers. He claimed that there were hardly 6,000 people in the Multan jalsa. He said the opposition parties must act responsibly and stop playing with the lives of the people as the second wave of Covid-19 was proving to be more fatal.

In his remarks, Special Assistant on Political Communication Shahbaz Gill said the corrupt leaders sitting abroad should come back to the country and face the courts. He said those leaders plundered the national exchequer. Ali Dar had confirmed that he had bought 52 villas in the UAE.

According to the report, Ali Dar had admitted that his company - Hazrat Data Sahib (HDS) - acquired 52 villas in the UAE in the early 2000s by pumping millions of dirhams into the real estate business but later sold out this property in 2008.

However, at that time both the father and son had strongly denied the allegations leveled by the PTI that the business empire was established by laundering billions of rupees in transactions between Pakistan and Dubai. Gill said his press conference today was to expose what kind of people the PML-N leaders were.

"They were used to the interviews with [certain] journalists where they would cut [some shots] of their interview."

The premier's aide said that Ishaq Dar's interview was an example of what Maryam Nawaz keeps saying: "Their legs start shaking".

He said Maryam Nawaz should have asked someone to go and see how shaky Dar's legs were at that time and not just that also how badly he was sweating too. "The most unfortunate aspect is that besides the fact they are corrupt, in the end, they are Pakistanis," he added.

Gill said that Dar had termed the premier "a fascist" - a label that the country's "enemies" were trying to impose on Pakistan.

However, they have failed.

"Dar [in the interview] was unable to answer how PM Imran Khan is a "fascist" and the interviewer informed him that the incumbent prime minister was working with China, just like earlier leaders," he said.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020