Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has named US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu as the American official who has been making ‘threats’ towards him and his government, Dawn reported on Monday.
Khan claimed that the US had sent a threatening message to him through the Pakistan’s envoy there, adding that Donald Lu had reportedly in a meeting with Ambassador Asad Majeed warned that there could be implications for Pakistan if Imran Khan survived the opposition’s no-confidence motion in the National Assembly. Khan had also claimed that he received reports that PTI dissidents had frequented the US embassy.
“What were the reasons that the people, who have left us, met people of the embassy frequently in the last few days,” he wondered, adding that he told them that when the National Security Council (NSC) had condemned the involvement of an external force in no-trust resolution, counting of votes on the motion had become “irrelevant”.
Khan has been claiming for some time now that there is a foreign conspiracy to overthrow his government and that a very “big power” is behind the move and which has been financing the entire thing.
Who is Donald Lu?
Lu is a foreign service officer with more than 30 years of US government service. He has served as deputy chief of mission in India from 2010 to 2013.
As the assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia, Lu is the top US diplomat in the state department focused on the region. A former US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan and Albania, he has also served in the US embassy in New Delhi on two separate occasions.
Lu became assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian affairs in September last year. Prior to this, he served as the US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan from 2018 to 2021 and Albania from 2015 to 2018. Before his posting in Albania, Lu worked on the Ebola crisis in West Africa as the deputy coordinator for Ebola response in the department of state.
Earlier in his career, he was assigned as deputy director in the office of central Asian and south Caucasus affairs, bureau of European affairs (2001-2003), political officer in New Delhi (1997-2000), special assistant to the ambassador in New Delhi (1996-1997), political officer in Peshawar between 1992 and 1994. With agency inputs
