Islamabad, Aug 29: A scathing letter allegedly written by Abdul Basit, former Pakistan envoy to India, to Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, Islamabad’s current ambassador to the US, has surfaced online, in which Basit has criticised the latter’s tenure as Foreign Secretary as “the worst ever”, according to Dawn News. “The more I think the more I am convinced that you have been the worst Foreign Secretary ever,” Basit wrote in the letter, dated July 5, 2017, a copy of which has been circulating on social media. Sources in the Foreign Office confirmed to Dawn News that the letter is authentic.
Basit had written the acerbic letter in response to Chaudhry’s farewell letter which he wrote after being appointed the ambassador to the United States. Basit also expressed concern in his letter that Chaudhry would end up being “the worst Pakistan Ambassador in Washington D.C”. The ex-ambassador then went on to list the reasons behind his critique of Chaudhry, while alleging that Chaudhry was not made for the “delicate profession of diplomacy”. Basit cited two incidents as example - the joint statement issued after a meeting in the Russian city of Ufa between ousted Prime Minister waz Sharif and his Indian counterpart rendra Modi in 2015, and Pakistan’s failure to get re-elected to the United tions Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The Ufa joint statement had been criticised at the time for being the first Prime Minister-level joint statement in which Kashmir was not specifically mentioned. Later in 2015, Pakistan suffered diplomatic humiliation after losing in a bid for re-election to the UNHRC, forcing the Foreign Office to do some introspection and look for the causes.
Despite repeated attempts by Dawn News, Basit did not respond to telephone calls made to seek a comment on the letter. (IANS)