ISLAMABAD: Former ambassador Asad Majeed Khan, who created the cypher, engaged a lobbying business to advance Pak-US ties just five days before PTI Chairman Imran Khan revealed the alleged regime change conspiracy.
In an effort to improve the reputation of his party in the US after five months, Khan also hired the same company, Fenton/Arlook LLC.
On March 21, 2022, the Pakistan Embassy in Washington hired the company and afterwards signed a contract with them.
According to the contract, the embassy was required to pay the lobbying firm $30,000 per month for their efforts. The original contract, which ran from March 21 to September 20 of that year, required the embassy to pay two months’ worth of advance fees.
Five days after the deal was signed, on March 27, 2022, the then-prime minister Imran Khan attended a public gathering and displayed a copy of a purported document relating to a foreign conspiracy against his administration.
Later, it was discovered that Majeed, a former Pakistani envoy, had communicated a code to the Imran-led administration, signalling deteriorating ties between the two nations.
The minutes of the meeting between the ambassador and Donald Lu, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, on March 7, 2022—two weeks before to contracting the lobbying firm—are purportedly included in the cypher.
Five months later, in August 2022, Khan’s party employed the same business that Majeed had employed to advance PTI’s good standing abroad. However, the PTI was required by the arrangement to pay the lobbying company $25,000 per month.
The PTI hired the lobbying firm to interact and confer with knowledgeable people in the public and business sectors of the US and Pakistan in order to make decisions about how to improve the US-Pakistan relationship and to give the client and his associates guidance on how to go about doing so.
in Pa and the US A nonprofit NGO council on Pakistan relations, in addition to the PTI and the Pakistani Embassy in the US, verbally agreed to work with the same lobbying company. The firm would tell the American and international media about the council’s desire for fruitful diplomatic and economic ties between Pakistan and the US, as per the agreement. Kistan will make decisions.
According to the arrangement with the embassy, the Fenton/Arlook LLC was tasked with providing information to journalists and informing them on Pakistan’s desire for good relations with the US, placing articles and broadcasts, setting up interviews, and providing social media advice.
“We use journalists in our public relations efforts to clarify Pakistan’s viewpoints and strengthen friendly ties between the United States and its longtime ally Pakistan. We want to encourage investment and tourism while combating false information. The agreement states that the scope of our activity is restricted to traditional public relations tasks like information distribution, setting up background briefings with journalists, conducting interviews, writing op-eds, etc.
