Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) information secretary Dr Nafisa Shah, in a statement, said that any decision made while keeping parliament in the dark would not be acceptable to the opposition.
“The cancellation of the Malaysia visit of the prime minister is a very serious issue,” Dr. Shah said and asked the government to bring the matter to parliament for debate.
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi earlier had announced that there would be no representation from Pakistan at the summit of some 20 Muslim countries which started in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.
Pakistan was one of the first countries with which Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad shared his plans for holding the summit when he met PM Khan along with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York in September.
Dr. Nafisa Shah is of the view that as a nation, Pakistan should not be supporting any one side at the international level.
She said that the government should also tell parliament "what money is being taken by the government and on what conditions".
Chairman of Pakistan’s Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs Mushahid Hussain Sayed has termed the government’s decision to skip KL summit as extremely dangerous.
In a tweet message he said that backing out from KL Summit: when Malaysia, Turkey, Iran supported Pakistan on Kashmir like a rock is very damaging for Pakistan’s core interests. “Pakistani credibility will be in tatters after this shocking U-turn,” he said.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) MNA and former foreign minister Khurram Dastagir Khan also criticized the government for its “wavering foreign policy.”
"The cancellation of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to Kuala Lumpur is the most recent example of his dithering and craven conduct of foreign policy, which is comforting Pakistan’s enemies and dismaying our friends," he said while talking to media.
The PML-N leader said the “weak excuses” the prime minister had given “to justify” staying away from the Kuala Lumpur summit signified his “inability to balance Pakistan’s long-term foreign policy interests with temporary benefits”.
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