QUETTA, Feb 14: The government is making efforts for the safe recovery of the kidnapped chief of UNHCR in Quetta, John Solecki, and investigators have uncovered important leads, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik said on Saturday.

“We have reviewed the progress made in the case. We have uncovered some important information, which I will not share at the moment because it will compromise our efforts,” he told a press conference after chairing a meeting here.

The meeting was attended, among others, by Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani, Home Minister Mir Zafarullah Zehri, heads of all security agencies, including the IG of the Frontier Corps, Maj-Gen Saleem Nawaz, and IG Police Asif Nawaz Waraich.

Mr Malik termed the demands of the so-called Baloch Liberation United Front unrealistic and denied that 141 women were in the custody of security agencies. “Their demands are not based on facts,” he said, adding that their list of detained women was unrealistic. “The list’s authenticity is challengeable. I can … say with full authority that there is no woman is in the custody of any security agency.”

He said that it was unthinkable for the government to have endorsed such an action because the government was struggling for women’s rights. The government, he said, had initiated and got a bill for protecting women’s rights adopted in parliament.

Referring to the purported case of Zarina Marri, Mr Malik said that the government had approached NADRA to verify her record, but it “has no record about her”.

He said that if the list was true, parents and relatives of the 141 women, whom kidnappers claimed to be under detention, should come forward and provide their manes and details to the government. “The government will try to verify their claims.”

He also questioned the authenticity of claims about 6,000 ‘missing’ political workers and said that according to earlier claims, there were about 1,000 people ‘missing’.

He said that the Balochistan chief minister had handed over an “incomplete list of 800 ‘missing’ people to the interior ministry”. He said that the ministry had verified the names of 200 people and work was in progress about ascertaining the identity of the remaining people.

“Some of the missing people are under training in … camps in Afghanistan,” he said, adding that the government has video evidence to prove it.

He said that some of the people included in the missing persons’ list had shifted to Dubai. “Some political workers and leaders on the list have already been released.”

“We do not want to keep any political prisoner in jail because we have faced the same problems ourselves,” Mr Malik said that their third demand had got nothing to do with Pakistan.

Responding to a question about the 72-hour ultimatum issued by the kidnappers, he said that such deadlines were given to “enemies and not friends.”

“These people want to weaken Pakistan.”

He said that by floating unrealistic demands, Pakistan’s enemies wanted to defame the country internationally to achieve their nefarious designs. However, he said, they should not consider the government to be weak government should not be considered weak and it would take steps to counter their designs.

He inviting the attention of international community said that all these demands were highly unrealistic. “They wanted to keep the country under pressure by making unrealistic demands,” the adviser said, adding that it should end now.

He urged the kidnappers to release the UNHCR official and said that he was “a guest who had come to Pakistan to serve our people”.