Islamabad: Former Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is in the United States to hold meetings with top US officials over the alleged discriminatory attitude of the government towards him and his Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), sources said.
According to sources, Zardari is in New York, after which he will go to Washington to hold meetings with senior US officials.
PPP insiders said Zardari reached New York two days ago, where he will soon be joined by his son Bilawal Bhutto and senior PPP leader Sherry Rehman.
“The PPP leadership is preparing for its meetings with senior US officials in Washington in next 48 hours,” said a party leader.
He said Zardari had arrived in US with ‘certain complaints against the Pakistani establishment and the way his party-led government in Sindh is being treated back home’.
Earlier, Bilawal Bhutto said the return of the internally displaced persons of tribal areas to their homes was critical to the development and mainstreaming of tribal areas and deplored the government’s neglect of this issue as a crime against the people of tribal areas.
“It is scandalous that the internally displaced persons (IDPs) are still rotting in camps despite tall claims that more than 90 % of the tribal areas have been cleared of the militants and extremists”, he said while addressing the office bearers and workers of PPP from the tribal areas here last night.
Bilawal Bhutto also called upon the provincial and central chapters, the parliamentarians and senior leadership of the party to expose the government’s apathy towards the plight of the tribal people and force it to resettle and rehabilitate the IDPs.
Bilawal Bhutto deplored that the government had done nothing for reforms in the tribal areas even though their mainstreaming was also a central plank of the National action Plan (NAP).
He said the Asif Ali Zardari had also addressed recently a letter to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on this subject but the letter has not even been acknowledged.
He said that according to the constitution tribal areas were part of Pakistan. However, its people were denied basic rights as guaranteed to the people of other parts of the country as the superior courts had no jurisdiction in the tribal areas.
