I agree with
Bubber Shair that there was no need for President Alvi to give statement against France when FATF session was just 2-3 days away. Pakistan had already conveyed its sentiments when French President supported the publication of blasphemous caricature.
My observations regarding our placement in grey list are as follows. ( The Present government has done a commendable job in trying to come out of the grey list).
France is against Pakistan due to various reasons. Top of the list is France’s extreme closeness with India over the past few years, particularly after Modi took over India in 2014. Incidentally, Nawaz Sharif was our PM at that time. France has got a big defense deal with India under which it is providing Rafael jets to India. And we know that India had categorically said that it would isolate Pakistan internationally. It is trivial to understand that India is trying utmost to keep Pakistan in FATF grey list ( or, if possible, throw Pakistan in black list) and it is using France for that purpose.
Next, we should also remember when and why we are placed in FATF grey list and who ruled us at that time. We were warned before being placed in the grey list. Why didn’t we take warning from the European Countries seriously at that time?
Lastly, we should understand that avoiding grey listing in the first place was not difficult; we needed only three countries to support us. Getting out of grey list is a hell of a task, however. We need 12 votes to come out of grey list. We must ask ourselves who was ruling us when we were placed in grey list and what was the performance of our government at diplomatic front that we couldn’t get 3 countries on our side at that time. Only China was with us at that time. One can say that Saudis were against us at that time due to our stance on Yemen war. But, we couldn’t convince Turkey and Malaysia too to vote for us at that time which we should have done. So, either our diplomacy was a complete failure, or we wanted to give favor to Modi by placing ourselves in grey list. My last statement is a food-for-thought for PMLN supporters.