Ambassador of Netherlands to Pakistan Willem Wouter Plomp held a meeting with Speaker National Assembly Asad Qaiser in Islamabad.

During the meeting, Netherlands envoy appreciated the steps taken by Pakistan to check money laundering and terror financing and also reaffirmed support to Pakistan at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

The envoy said there is great scope of cooperation between Pakistan and Netherlands in the area of agriculture.

He said his country can assist Pakistan in enhancing production of potatoes, dairy farming and cultivation of flowers on commercial basis.

Willem Wouter Plomp said the investors of his country are also interested to invest in Pakistan.

Speaker National Assembly Asad Qaiser urged Netherlands to play its role in getting stopped human rights violations in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir.  He said Pakistan is a peace loving country and striving for durable peace in the region.

The Speaker said Pakistan wants to strengthen its relations with Netherlands through parliamentary diplomacy.

China urges international community to support Pak on FATF

A delegation of Pakistan led by Minister for Economic Affairs, Hammad Azhar, has been in Paris to attend session of the FATF.

The task force will decide on Pakistan’s exit from its grey list or retaining the country in the list, sources said.

Pakistan has already made substantial progress over compliance of the recommendations of the task force.

Previous FATF session in Beijing had affirmed tangible progress made by Pakistan over its recommendations.

The forum was founded in 1989 to develop policies to combat money laundering and terrorism financing.

In the last session of the FATF, India had opposed removal of Pakistan from the grey list.

While, the United States and the European Union had backed Islamabad’s efforts in line with the FATF guidelines.

China, Turkey and the Malaysia are already supporting Pakistan, while it is expected that Pakistan can get more support from the member countries due to its positive diplomacy.

Earlier, the officials of Pakistan and Financial Action Task Force had continued dialogues in Beijing where the implementation report of Islamabad was reviewed regarding the four-month progress on the FATF action plan.

Analysts expect Pakistan to either exit the grey list soon after winning a “largely-compliant” rating from the FATF or might get more time from the watchdog to ensure full compliance.