PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari will take oath as Pakistan’s foreign minister in a day or two, a senior party leader has said, ending speculation that all allies of the government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif are not on the same page.
The 33-year-old scion of the Bhutto-Zardari family — who is the front-runner for the coveted post of the foreign minister — did not take oath on Tuesday, giving rise to speculation about his reluctance to join the new government.
Qamar Zaman Kaira, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader and adviser to the Prime Minister on Kashmir affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan, in a conversation with journalists in London, confirmed that Bilawal would take oath as foreign minister in a day or two.
A day after he excused himself from taking oath as the foreign minister, Bilawal headed to London where he met Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif during which they discussed the “overall political situation” in Pakistan and vowed to work together on issues pertaining to politics and national interest.
PPP and PML-N — the two main political parties — have been alternatively in power when the military was not ruling the country.
IMF assures Lanka of help
The International Monetary Fund has assured support to debt-ridden Sri Lanka in its efforts to mitigate the current economic crisis and termed the initial discussions with the delegation led by the country’s finance minister Ali Sabry as “fruitful”.
“The Sri Lankan delegation and the IMF team had fruitful technical discussions on the authorities’ request for an IMF-supported programme. The discussions covered recent economic and financial developments in Sri Lanka, and the need for implementing a credible and coherent strategy to restore macroeconomic stability,” the IMF said on Saturday.
