Pak has turned into a US colony: Imran Khan

Lahore, Mar 9: Lashing out at  the Pakistani rulers for bowing down to United States, politician and former cricketer Imran Khan said that Pakistan has now turned into a 'colony of the US'.

 

"President Asif Ali Zardari and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in a bid to prolong their rule at the centre and in the province of Punjab, respectively, are following American policies and have turned Pakistan into a US colony," he said.

Refusing to join hands with US, Khan said that if his party, Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf comes to power then it would changed  Pakistan into a 'true Islamic welfare state'.

"My party is struggling to change the system and it will never join hands with opportunist political forces of the country," Khan said.

Khan said that the government should move on from torturing 'small time thieves' and instead concentrate on bringing to book the beneficiaries of now-defunct National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), a graft amnesty of which Zardari and several of his close associates are benficiaries.

"The office of president is still in the clutches of a dictator, who is facing a friendly opposition in the form of the PML-N, and the political dispensation is similar to that of General Pervez Musharraf's regime," he said.

Khan, whose party is considered to be close to the radical Jamaat-e- Islami, was recently asked to mediate between the local Taliban and the government.

Both Khan's party and Jamaat-e- Islami boycotted the 2008 general election.