A State Department spokesperson has responded to a news report carrying a ‘leaked’ copy of a diplomatic cable, also called cipher, that then Pakistan ambassador to Washington in March 2022 had sent to Pakistan and that PTI chairman Imran Khan has repeatedly cited as evidence of a conspiracy to remove him from power.

The spokesman, Mathew Miller, said while he could not comment on the veracity of the document, even if its contents were accurate it simply proved that there was no meddling in the internal affairs of Pakistan from the United States.

“It’s a report – reported to be a Pakistani document. I can’t speak to whether it is an actual Pakistani document or not; just simply don’t know. With respect to the comments that were reported, I’m not going to speak to private diplomatic exchanges other than to say that, even if those comments were accurate as reported, they in no way show the United States taking a position on who the leader of Pakistan ought to be, “ said Miller.

The contents of the cipher, which The Intercept says it could not authenticate independently, suggest that Washington was unhappy with Imran Khan visiting Moscow at the time when Putin was planning the invasion of Ukraine. Miller said the sentiment had been communicated to Pakistan publicly and this was not a secret.

“We express concern privately to the Government of Pakistan, as we express concern publicly, about the visit of then-Prime Minister Khan to Moscow on the very day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We made that concern quite clear.

“But as the former Pakistani ambassador to the United States himself has stated, the allegations that the United States has interfered in internal decisions about the leadership of Pakistan are false. As we’ve stated, they’re false. They’ve always been false, and they remain false.”

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The spokesman insisted that the US position or comments attributed to US assistant secretary Donald Lu did not imply Washington wanted a change of government in Pakistan.

“So without stipulating whether it’s an accurate comment or not, if you take all of the comments in context that were reported in that – in that purported cable, I think what they show is the United States Government expressing concern about the policy choices that the prime minister was taking. It is not in any way the United States Government expressing a preference on who the leadership of Pakistan ought to be.”

Desire to take comments out of context

Miller also said that some people have a “desire” to take comments out of context to advance their agenda.

“I will say that I can understand how those comments, number one, could be taken out of context; and number two, how people might have the – might desire for them to be taken out of context, and might try to use them to advance an agenda that is not represented by the comments themselves.”

Imran Khan told reporters in 2022 that the cipher contained details of a meeting between US assistant secretary for South Asia Donald Lu and Pakistani ambassador Asad Majeed and that Lu had warned the ambassador of consequence if Khan stayed in power.

The contents of the cipher as reported by The Intercept have no mention of consequences or any warning but Lu has been quoted as saying that if the no-confidence motion against Khan succeeds ‘all will be forgiven in Washington.’

However, The Intercept has admitted that not only it did not verify the authenticity of the document, it published the alleged cipher “correcting minor typos in the text because such details can be used to watermark documents and track their dissemination.”