- Foreign Minister Qureshi brought no news of FATF relief
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has completed a three-nation tour, of Saudi Arabia, Iran and the USA, with the most pressing item on his agenda reserved for the end. Though the structure of his tour indicated that he was acting as a bridge between the three, in the USA, his emphasis was on the country playing a part in keeping Pakistan off the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) black list, and indeed to help ensure that it is taken off the grey list, on which it has been presently based, at the FATF meeting in Beijing next month, and then at the plenary meeting in Paris in April. Pakistan is already on the list of countries which have not done enough to stop money laundering and where terrorists can still raise funds for their activities.
It has been unfortunate that India has used the forum to foment ill-will against Pakistan, and tried to paint it as a terrorist state that should be blacklisted. Unfortunately, Pakistan has laid itself open to this charge. Its recent actions, such as screening investors in savings schemes and tightening controls on commercial banks, do indicate a definite seriousness about combatting terror funding, but the fact that the steps, along with many others, have only been taken very recently, shows that they had not been taken before. It is thus no wonder that China, which has always backed Pakistan at international fora, cried off on FATF recently, as has Saudi Arabia.
Its failure to take action had allowed India to sell a narrative of Pakistan as a terrorist haven. Mere verbal denials were not believed. Pakistan itself should have acted against terror financing, because it should have realised that ending it was in its own interest. Now it finds it has to do what it should have done without compulsion before, and itself subject to the will of the USA. What price exactly the USA will extract for this support, if any, will be seen, but it would not have had to be paid if Pakistan had much earlier taken the measures it now has to take. The FATF listing is important not just because of Pakistan’s access to the world capital markets, but because the IMF has indicated that it will pull out its programme if Pakistan is blacklisted.
