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France has decided against helping Pakistan upgrade its fleet of Mirage fighter jets, air defence system and Agosta 90B class submarines, a direct fallout of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s loud criticism of French President Emmanuel Macron’s defence of the right to mock religion following the murder of a French schoolteacher, people familiar with the matter said.
France has also told Qatar, one of the countries that bought the Rafale fighters, not to allow Pakistan-origin technicians to work with the plane over concerns that they could leak technical information about the fighter to Islamabad as the omni-role jet is the front-line fighter of India. Pakistan is known to share vital defence data with China in the past.
Paris has already started putting the asylum requests from Pakistanis under detailed scrutiny in view of the strained ties between the two countries and the stabbing incident outside the former Paris office of the controversial Charlie Hebdo magazine. In September, Ali Hassan, an 18-year-old of Pakistani origin, stabbed two persons with a meat cleaver outside the magazine’s previous office, unaware that the magazine had shifted out. His father, who lives in Pakistan, later told a local news channel that his son had “done a great job” and he is “very happy” about the attack.Read more…
