US rubbishes Imran's claim of ‘foreign conspiracy' to unseat him

Pakistan Political Crisis: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has been hyping a so-called threat letter from a “foreign country”, which he, in an address to the nation, said was the US.

Published on: Apr 1, 2022, 09:51:49 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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The US state department rubbished the allegations by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan that America was involved in the no-confidence motion tabled in the National Assembly earlier this week. State department spokesperson Ned Price asserted that there was no truth to the allegations, insisting that the US respects and supports Pakistan’s constitutional process and the rule of law.

Price’s comments were echoed by the White House communications director, stating that there is "absolutely no truth" to Khan’s allegations of the US working with the Opposition in Pakistan to remove him from power.

Khan has been hyping a so-called threat letter from a “foreign country”, which he, in an address to the nation, said was the US. Referring to the letter which he is yet to publicly release, the Pakistan Prime Minister, whose fate looks all but sealed, claimed that it was evidence of an “international conspiracy” to unseat him.

“We are closely following developments in Pakistan, and we respect, we support Pakistan’s constitutional process and the rule of law,” Price responded to the allegations.

The response comes against the backdrop of a late-night development where Pakistan’s Foreign Office summoned US Acting Deputy Chief of Mission Richard Snelsire and handed him a demarche to protest the “foreign conspiracy” to unseat Khan.

Pakistan's top security body had earlier confirmed its intention to issue a strong demarche to a country, that it did not name, over the letter.

Thanks to Khan and his advisers, Pakistan’s relationship with the US is in tatters, especially after declining an invitation to US President Joe Biden’s democracy summit in December and Islamabad’s continued interference in the Taliban set-up, which the former cricketer once saw as a victory.

Khan said that Sunday will be a defining day in the country’s political history as he used words like “traitors” and “handlers” for opposition and foreign countries. Sunday could well turn out defining day, if not for Pakistan, at least for Imran Khan, whose exit from the top post is looking imminent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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