LAHORE: PPP (central Punjab) President Imtiaz Safdar Warraich has criticised former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi for alleging in his Ghotki rally on Sunday that the nuclear weapons were not safe under the present PPP regime.

“How can the atomic assets be unsafe in the presence of the PPP leadership since Mr Qureshi knows it well that party’s founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and her daughter Benazir Bhutto have sacrificed their lives for their safety.

He (Qureshi) just wants to defame the PPP government by leveling baseless allegations, but the party workers will foil all his efforts,” Mr Warraich said while speaking at a press conference here on Monday.

Flanked by secretary-general Samiullah Khan and other party leaders, he said Mr Qureshi being the foreign minister had already declared the atomic assets safe under the PPP government.

He said one thing was common in Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Imran Khan that both had supported the so-called referendums of Gen Ziaul Haq and Gen Pervez Musharraf.

He termed the former foreign minister an opportunist who always did the politics for his personal and vested interests. “Why Mr Qureshi didn’t raise any objection on President Zardari at the time when he was lobbying for becoming the Punjab chiefminister or the foreign minister of Pakistan,” Mr Warraich said.

He warned Mr Qureshi to avoid giving derogatory remarks against the party leadership or else angry PPP workers knew well how to tackle a turncoat.

Chandio: Federal Minister for Law and Justice Maula Bakhsh Chandio has criticised former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and described him as a traitor.

“Qureshi is playing the role of a traitor, not a rebel and he is doing this just for his vested political interests,” theminister told journalists at the Lahore airport on Monday.

About Qureshi’s public meeting in Ghotki, Chandio said it couldn’t dent Pakistan’s biggest political party and its leadership. He said Nawaz Sharif shouldn’t have moved the Supreme Court on the memogate issue because the government had already accepted his demands in this regard. “The PML-N leadership wants early polls and it is using all tactics to achieve this goal, but this will not happen.”

He said as Sharif fulfilled his promise made with Pervez Musharraf and lived in exile for 10 years, the PPP government would fulfill its promise made with the people and complete its five-year term.