Pakistan’s foreign minister Asad Umar has on Saturday written a letter to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) president urging him to designate any other nation except India as the co-chair of the Asia-Pacific Joint Group in order “to ensure that FATF process is fair, unbiased and objective”, the ministry of finance reported.
According to Dawn news reports, in the statement released by the foreign ministry, Umar has cited “India’s animosity towards Pakistan” what he claimed to have knowledge as a reason for the request. Umar called for attention to “the recent violation of Pakistan’s airspace and dropping of bombs inside Pakistani territory” which he claimed was “another manifestation of India’s hostile attitude”.
The statement stated, “The letter referred to Indian Finance Minister’s statement regarding efforts for global isolation of Pakistan and [the] Indian call for [the] blacklisting of Pakistan during the International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) meeting on February 18, 2019, which demonstrated Indian intentions to hurt Pakistan’s economic interests.”
In his letter, Umar sought to reason that given a “clear Indian motivation to hurt Pakistan’s economic interests, Indian presence among the evaluators and as co-chair of the Joint Group would undermine the impartiality and spirit of the peer review process, which lies at the heart of FATF’s methodology and objective assessment”.
He asserted, “We firmly believe that India’s involvement in the ICRG process will not be fair towards Pakistan.”
Umar has also assured the FATF president that Islamabad “remains firm in its commitment to work with FATF/ICRG and the Joint Group and to implement the Action Plan”.