Rabbani wants DG ISI to explain payments for ‘special assignment’
Islamabad, May 03: Senator Raza Rabbani on Thursday demanded that ISI Director General Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar appear in Senate for an in camera session and shed light on an unexplained, but significant sum of money made available to the intelligence agency in the recently unveiled federal budget for fiscal 2018-19.
The ISI chief, according to the Miftah Ismail-announced budget, was reportedly given access to Rs4.5 billion for a “special assignment”, which Rabbani wants more details about.
“The DG ISI was given funds for a special assignment,” Rabbani said during the Senate session on budget today. “When quizzed over it during a press conference, it was said such details cannot be disclosed in public.
“We are not asking about other expenses but what do they mean by a ‘special assignment’? This needs to be explained,” he said.
“The parliament should be taken in confidence over this payment made to the DG ISI,” he added.
Rabbani also took note of the marked increase in defence expenditure for the upcoming year, saying: “This government has blown the federation to smithereens. The defence budget was increased by 20 per cent on the federal government’s recommendations.
“This budget of Rs1.1 trillion does not even reflect pension payments,” he observed.
Rabbani, in his speech, also questioned if increasing the defence and federal expenditures have had any affect on the National Finance Commission (NFC) award.
“Is it due to these increased expenditures that the NFC award is not being implemented?” he asked, before adding: “For a fourth budget to come without an NFC award is unfortunate.”
The former Senate chairman further complained that “there was neither a need for this budget nor a three-to-four-month budget, as the caretaker setup would have had the authority to take finance-related decisions.”
Meanwhile, media persons present at the upper house to cover the session staged a boycott in protest over the police’s violence against journalists earlier in the day.
