Ex-envoy to India Abdul Basit calls Aizaz Chaudhry ‘worst foreign secretary’
Former Pakistan high commissioner to India Abdul Basit has launched a scathing attack on his former boss Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry — the incumbent ambassador to the United States — calling him the worst foreign secretary ever.
In a letter allegedly written by Abdul Basit to Mr Chaudhry, on July 5, 2017, the former envoy who sought premature retirement after being superseded for the foreign secretary’s job this year, criticised Mr Chaudhry’s policies and predicted that he would also prove to be the worst ambassador to the US
The letter surfaced online and the foreign ministry officials later confirmed that it was authentic. “The more I think the more I am convinced that you have been the worst Foreign Secretary ever,” Mr Basit wrote in the letter.
Mr Basit was replaced after opting for an early retirement earlier this month by Sohail Mahmood in India had allegedly written the letter in response to Mr
The more I think the more I am convinced that you (Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry) have been the worst foreign secretary ever
Abdul Basit, Ex-Pak high commissioner to India
Chaudhry’s farewell letter which he wrote after being appointed the ambassador to US.
Mr Basit contended that Mr Chaudhry was not made for the ‘delicate profession of diplomacy’.
He cited two incidents as example — the joint statement issued after a meeting in the Russian city of Ufa between ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in 2015, and Pakistan’s failure to get re-elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC).
The Ufa joint statement had been criticised at the time for being the first prime minister-level joint statement in which Kashmir was not specifically mentioned.
Later in 2015, Pakistan suffered diplomatic humiliation after losing in a bid for re-election to the UNHRC, forcing the foreign office to do some introspection and look for the causes. The defeat was shocking because it was the first time that Pakistan had lost a major election at the UN.
Mr Basit wrote in the letter, “It is more worrisome your heart is not in the right place.”
The former envoy said it was in Pakistan’s interest that Mr Chaudhry is removed from his post as the envoy to US.