Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry on Monday said Pakistan firmly believes that stability in Afghanistan can come only by taking all ethnic groups on board as Afghanistan is a hugely ethnically divided country.
Talking to BBC World, the minister said in a meeting with former president Ashraf Ghani, Prime Minister Imran Khan did talk about an inclusive government even before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. “Our emphasis was always on an inclusive government. If the elections had been delayed as PM Imran Khan had suggested earlier and an inclusive government would have been placed, things might have been different today,” he said.
Fawad said as far as future of Afghanistan is concerned, Pakistan has to work together with the regional and international players for formation of an inclusive government. “We are in touch with the regional powers and US and UK,” he said. “We don’t have influence over Taliban but we can bring Taliban to table,” he said.
The minister said Pakistan has lost 80,000 people and billions of dollars in economy because of Afghan war. “The reason why Pakistan is conveniently blamed for others’ fault is that the powers who should have paid heed to Pakistan’s advice earlier always overlooked and we had to pay the price of this conflict,” he added.
Fawad said Pakistan is are capable of taking on TTP. “We had a problem with the previous Afghan government as at that time, India was using Afghan soil for funding TTP,” he said. “We welcome Taliban’s statement regarding their land not to be used against any country. They have showed the world that Afghanistan will not become a haven of international terrorist organizations,” he said. “If instability continues in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of Afghans will migrate to Pakistan and that’s one of the reason that we are trying our best to avert any instability in Afghanistan,” he added.
Separately, Fawad Chaudhry said the proposed Pakistan Media Development Authority (PMDA) will be authorised to impose a fine on TV channels of up to Rs250 million against the current upper limit of Rs 1 million in existing laws.
In an interactive session with digital broadcasters on Monday, the minister said there are currently seven laws regulating media in Pakistan. “Social media is dealt by the PTA, press is managed by the Press Council, the electronic media is dealt by Pemra, labour regulations are looked after by Implementation Tribunal for Newspapers Employees (ITNE), while the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) deals with newspaper registrations.” He reiterated that all the laws were being abolished to replace them with the one authority – the PMDA.
Fawad said there is no provision for criminal liability in the proposed law, but “it does have the authority to impose a fine up to Rs250 million.” “Currently, organisations obtain a stay order from court in response to a notice and fine imposed by Pemra,” he regretted.
He said the censor board will also be dissolved and a new entity – ‘Board of Films Censor’ – will be established in its place. The minister said a media commission had also been created which will have four people each from the government and media bodies and it will be headed by a chairman. “The commission will have the powers to appoint people in the proposed complaint committee and media tribunal.” He said the media tribunal would be able to entertain complaints from media workers, adding that “many owners are opposing formation of media tribunals, but the government will go ahead with its plan.”
He said verdicts by media tribunal would be final and could only be challenged in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
