Only three days after several audio conversations of PMLN leaders, purportedly recorded at the Prime Minister House, surfaced on social media, a similar audio clip of PTI Chief Imran Khan has also been leaked to the internet, sparking a series of press conferences and statements from both the opposition and government.
In the audio clip — which was purportedly recorded when Khan was in power but facing a no-trust vote in the National Assembly earlier this year — the then-prime minister is issuing instructions to a senior bureaucrat about a cipher received from the Washington Embassy of Pakistan.
Imran Khan used the cipher as evidence of a ‘‘foreign conspiracy’’ that he said led to his removal from power. After being ousted, he named the United States as the country behind the “conspiracy.”
However, in the conversation Imran Khan is clearly instructing Azam Khan — the top bureaucrat at the time — that the United States must not be named.
“We will only spin it (Hum ney sirf es par khelnaa hy). We won’t name the United States. Just spin it like the date was already there on it,” Imran Khan is heard in the clip.
Azam Kha, who was the principal secretary to the prime minister, proposed that a meeting should on called on the cipher where the-Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi reads out the letter.
“Whatever he reads out will be turned into the copy. I will create minutes from it that the foreign secretary has told [the government] this,” he said.
Azam Khan, who said he had been thinking about the issue the previous night, tells Imran Khan that after he prepares the report, an analysis will be done based on the minutes created by him and submitted to the official record.
The analysis will say that this is a threat issued in diplomatic language, he said.
The top bureaucrat under Imran Khan is heard saying that it was in his hands to draft the minutes the way the Imran Khan government wanted.
Imran Khan then asks who will participate in the meeting. “Shah Mahmood, you (Azam Khan), me and [the-then Foreign Secretary] Sohail [Mahmood]?” he said.
“Just that,” said Azam Khan.
Imran Khan says that the meeting should be held the very next day.
Azam Khan says that the meeting was necessary to put things on the record. “Since he is the Consulate for the State, when he reads it out, I can easily copy it and it would come on the record that this thing happened,” he said.
The principal secretary advises Imran Khan to invite the foreign secretary to the meeting so that the issue does not remain only political in nature but also registered on the bureaucratic record.
Imran Khan said that the foreign secretary will have to come to the meeting since the ambassador had written the cipher.
“But we don’t have the copy! How did they remove it?” said Azam Khan.
“It was taken from here. He did. But anyhow it is. So, let’s spin it into a foreign conspiracy, Imran Khan said.
