from her own conservative party. but a third of her own members of parliament voted against her, and with brexit at a crucial stage, the result is not much help at all to her chances of getting her deal approved by mps. mrs may is heading to see european leaders, hoping for reassurances that may help convince her opponents at home. donald trump's former lawyer has been jailed for three years, for paying off two women who said they'd had affairs with the president, breaching campaign rules, and lying to congress. as he was sentenced, michael cohen made a blistering attack on the president, saying hisjob had been to cover up his boss's dirty deeds. french police and security forces are still hunting the suspect in the deadly strasbourg christmas market attack. there are reports the gunman may have crossed the border into germany — security forces there are also on alert. you are up—to—date on the headlines.

now on bbc news — hardtalk‘s stephen sackur speaks to pakistan's finance minister asad umar. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. it took former cricketer imran khan two decades of hard political slog to win power in pakistan. it has taken his critics just months to decide he's out of his depth. they point to the country's crippled economy, propped up by emergency loans, despite imran‘s promise to end the "begging bowl" culture. well, my guest today is pakistan's finance minister, asad umar. is the pti government strong enough to put pakistan on a new course? asad umar, in islamabad, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you. you are one of the key ministers in imran khan's government. why do you think the hope and excitement generated by imran‘s election victory has worn off so very quickly? actually, it hasn't. if you look at the pakistani media and listen to the political talk shows, and maybe hear some of the discussions going on in the parliament, you might be led into believing what you just said. but in reality, you know, when the first 100 days of the government ended, there was a lot of focus. a number of surveys got carried out. and if you look at the surveys, a very clear majority of pakistanis think the country is moving in the right direction,

it is moving towards a place where it is better than where it was earlier, and hope is very much in the air. the truth is, the country isn't going in the direction that imran promised for it. in fact, the press have taken to calling him mr u—turn. he said, "i will be ashamed to go abroad and ask for money." well, the truth is, that is precisely what he has been doing. well, but by the time the government came in, it was a fact well—known that pakistan needed some kind of a bailout. and i'm not saying that today. i said this repeatedly in interviews, to print in the national media, before going into the elections. and it's not something to be proud of, so if he says i'm ashamed of it, you have to have pretty low self—respect to go around and do what the prime minister of pakistan and the finance minister of pakistan have to do in current circumstances

and be proud of that fact. but the real challenge, the real decision, and that is how we'll be judged in the future — did we take the decisions of setting the country's economy on a path,, where this is going to be what i repeatedly said would be the last imf programme, if we get into one right now? and for that, a very, very clear direction has been set. pakistan has been using a growth strategy which is imported capital finance, consumption—led. that has let us repeatedly into these current account deficit cycles. it's taken our external indebtedness to a level which is not sustainable. until we move pakistan to a domestic resource—mobilised, productivity—led, export—oriented economy, we are not going to be getting out of this "begging bowl" syndrome. and in the very first 100 days, we have taken clear decisions which are moving the country in that direction. very interesting you say that, minister. but if one cuts through the economic jargon, it seems to me that what you have done is sort out loans from those that are going to impose the least conditions upon those loans. you looked at the imf at the very beginning,

you wanted a big wodge of money from them, some people said up to $12 billion. then you realised there were going to be very, very serious conditions imposed upon it, so you cut the bid to $6 billion, and you haven't even agreed that. and instead, you've raced over to the chinese and the saudis and taken their money, because they don't impose the same rigorous conditions. so you can't convince me that this is a new start for pakistan. there are actually two different parts to that thing. first of all, the sequence of actions is not exactly consistent with what you just said. when i became finance minister, i said we will be reaching out to bilateral countries, as well as starting a dialogue with the imf, and being able to do these things simultaneously, because there is no time to first work out a strategy which is your preferred option. and that's exactly what we did. we start — within ten days of becoming the finance minister, i had reached out to imf, invited their team over, and that team did come in,

the staff mission came in. they issued a report, we started a formal dialogue. the mission was here in the month of november, and that dialogue continues even today... well, that's all very well, minister, that's all very well, and i understand these things aren't altogether simple. but the bottom line is the imf ties giving you up to $us6—7 billion to some very serious reforms that you must make to stop living beyond your means, including hiking energy prices, for example. you don't want to do that, that's politically difficult, which seems to me why you're so tempted to take the money from saudi arabia, for example, where they're not imposing those kinds of conditions. if you allowed me to complete my answer, you would have gotten a response to this part as well. that's what i said, there was a second part of it, and that is, we have not waited for the imf to impose any sanctions on us or impose any conditions on us to do what we think is required for the economy. in the very first 100 days, we have increased gas prices, we have increased electricity prices, we've put in a supplementary

finance budget, where we increased taxes. we have been — the policy rate has been increased by the central bank, the rupee has been devalued, the currency has been adjusted by the central bank. so both the monetary policy and the fiscal policy have been moving in the very direction of the reforms that are needed. we don't need imf to dictate that to us for us to do that, because we believe this is what's necessary. however, the path for reform is different in the eyes of the imf, as we stand today, versus what we think is right, and that's what the dialogue is going on right now. there is no difference of opinion in terms of what needs to be done. it is the pace, the sequence, and the extent which is being discussed. well, the pace and the extent — they‘ re pretty important differences, i would suggest. yeah, yeah. but you keep avoiding the references i keep making to your decision

to take saudi money. when everybody else around the world was utterly appalled and disgusted by what we saw happen in the saudi consulate in istanbul with the murder of the saudi writer and journalist, jamal khashoggi, the pakistani government held its nose, decided to send top representation to that investment forum in riyadh, and your prime minister, imran khan himself, went out of his way to say nice things about the saudis. and as a result, you got an assistance package of around $6 billion. when we talk about shame, should you not be ashamed for that? well, i would be happy to be ashamed of standing up with a country with whom i've had close bilateral relations, and both countries which have supported each other over years, and i have never lectured on what kind of a system that country should hold. maybe the western leaders should be ashamed of themselves,

talking about democracy, talking about freedoms, and then reaching out into the same saudi pockets to take out billions of dollars‘s of business deals. the leader of the western world, the leader of the free world, mr donald trump, stands up and openly says i'm getting too much business from saudi arabia for me to worry about what happened to khashoggi. .. believe me... so maybe some of the western leaders should be ashamed of themselves. now... we are just being consistent in the bilateral relationship, which will remain the same, whoever is in power. finance minister, i take your point about donald trump. if he was sitting in the hardtalk chair, believe me, i'd be discussing with him his values, the way he treats his relationship with saudi arabia. as it happens, i've got you in the chair. i come back to the point. you've taken, in the last month or two, $6 billion of assistance from riyadh. that gives the saudis real leverage over you, as i understand it. one of the conditions is that you send some of your military personnel to work in saudi arabia.

you say that they won't be fighting in yemen, but they'll certainly be training the forces that do fight in yemen. is that a price that you, in all honesty, think is worth paying to just get yet more bailout money? the pakistani relationship with saudi arabia goes back half a century. this is very interesting, stephen. when i was born, that day, my father, who was working in the pakistan army at that point in time, was in saudi arabia and he had a meeting with the crown prince, who later became king faisal, who gave me a small koran. so this is a relationship which goes back 50 years. it has nothing to do with khashoggi, it has nothing to do with yemen. pakistani troops have been present in saudi arabia, and we have had a military relationship which spans half a century. and that relationship was not about to break because we may agree or disagree with saudi arabia on how to handle the yemen crisis. the thing is, if we move

beyond saudi arabia to your relationship with china, i see yet more seeds of trouble being sown by your desperation to get your hands on foreign currency to save your parlous budget. the chinese relationship involves a huge investment from china in this cpec — the china—pakistan economic corridor — much of the money going into vast infrastructure projects in balochistan. we know that many people in that very undeveloped part of your country are furious about the impact the chinese money and the chinese labour is having on their particular region. again, are you sure that all of the compromises you're making to get your hands on the cash are worth it? i'm not sure which compromise you're referring to, but stephen, i thought foreign direct investment was something which is good. that's what i learned from western economic schools.

that's the economics that i was taught... it all depends, minister — it all depends, minister, it all depends whose interest is it in> who has got the leverage, whose interest is it really serving? so what is supposed to be a good deal is where the interests of both the investor and the country in which the investment is taking place is served. both their interests are served, and that's exactly what is going on in cpec. as far as a vast number of people in balochistan being furious at what the chinese are doing there, on our last visit to china, when i went there with the prime minister, the chief minister of balochistan, who is the elected chief minister of balochistan, who represents the voice of the people of balochistan, was with us, and he was eager to have the chinese engagement in balochistan increased versus what it is right now. so i'm not sure which of these people are furious over chinese engagement in balochistan. why does your government not go public with all of the arrangements, the financial details behind china's loans and indeed investments in pakistan, including rates

of interest, labour terms and conditions, all of those things? many people in pakistan have asked you to be completely transparent about the nature of the deals you strike with the chinese, and the pakistani government has always refused. that's actually not true. there are... if i divide it into two different parts, most of the investments which have come in have been in what are called the independent power projects, the ipps, which it came in, and those are investments which are made under a transparent policy, which the regulator puts into place. so those terms and conditions — you can go on the website now and find out what the terms and conditions for those investments are. as far as the loans are concerned, the loan information, there is probably a lot of mistrust probably built around the media narrative which has been going around. when the imf team came in, we shared all the details with them, as transparently as they wanted. after the first meeting, i didn't hear any questions from them, because there was nothing to hide. did you see the words not

long ago of mike pompeo, the us secretary of state, when he was asked about his view and america's view of the imf helping pakistan in the future? he said, "make no mistake, we're going to watch what the imf is doing very closely. there is no rationale for imf dollars associated with american dollars being used to bail out chinese bond holders, or china itself." we will worry about our china debt problem. mr pompeo should worry about his china debt problem. usa is the biggest debtor in the world to china, $1.3 billion. what does pakistan owe to china? less than 10% of pakistan's foreign debt is chinese, 90% is not chinese. we have been in 12 different imf programmes in the last 20 years. why has it never been asked which western country has lent to pakistan?

why is there suddenly all this interest in how much money has come from china? why were the same questions not being asked when the lenders were western banks? you told me that the baloch people are thrilled china is putting so much money and infrastructure into their region. it is a little embarrassing, isn't it, when, recently, in the port city of gwadar, which you are trying to develop as a mega—port at the end of this sort of chinese transportation infrastructure through the region, it is a little embarrassing at the time you were taking delegates i believe from more than 20 countries to look at the potential of all of these projects, gunmen shot dead three workers, injured five others, and that was the fourth fatal shooting in the area in a few short months. the security situation — the degree of insecurity around that region and the anger that i have referred to that is generated among some by what is happening, that is a real threat to stability in balochistan. this is not anger of

the people of balochistan. these are activities sponsored by terrorists who received training, funding material from outside pakistan. and is there a serious attempt to try to destabilise balochistan, and through that try to subvert cpec? of course there is. there is a concerted effort. who is doing that? there is no disagreement. in your opinion, who is doing that, these external forces? led by india, of course. so, is there a terrorist intervention in balochistan? yes. what the people of balochistan thought there has been expressed through the free will of the people, by electing the government of balochistan, which stands by cpec, who want greater cpec presence in the province. let's talk about the big

picture in pakistan. imran khan came to power, you became finance minister promising a new era of fairness in your country, where every individual pakistani would get a fair shake. the situation today is that 45% of children under the age of five show signs of undernourishment and stunted growth. you have some of the worst education figures in all of south asia. and at the very same time, only 800,000 pakistanis out of a population of more than 200 million pay any significant tax. if you are to change that situation, it is going to require the most massive, thoroughgoing reform. those are the very reforms that we have been working on despite the severe balance of payment crisis. the revenue generation aspect is absolutely central to be able to deal with the horrendous

challenges that we have. you are absolutely right about that — the health situation, the education situation needs drastic reform. for that, you need revenue, for that you need the revenue authority fixed. so what are the things we've done? we have separated tax policy from tax administration, which is absolutely central to the reform effort. almost the entire top leadership of the revenue authority has been changed. we have made changes in law, which allow the application of modern technology, use of data analytics, algorithms, to figure out where tax evasion is taking place, who is evading taxes, to be able to go after them. we have developed this list of high net—worth individuals who are evading taxes — 3,100 of them have already been issued notices and a follow—up has been done. the database is more than 700,000. but we wanted a first pick up on the big ones, make them an example and expand the net. and i can go on about ten of the initiatives which have gone on as a result of this. it's interesting, it's interesting

you alight upon tax evasion, and of course that's one element of an accountable, transparent system of governance. another way of looking at that is looking at the state of the media and the right to free expression. imran khan and your government are accused by the committee to protectjournalists, in a statement released recently, of aiding and abetting a situation in your country where the pakistani army has, quote, "quietly but effectively set restrictions on reporting — lines of control which effectively gag the media." in the interests of open and transparent governance, you personally must be fighting that, are you? the need for pakistani democracy is a media which is free to express its opinion and get the facts to the people of pakistan. we, as democrats, have a vested interest in a free media. you don't have a free media.

you have journalists who are being disappeared by shadowy intelligence agencies. you have an opposition party who is saying, "our country is today under the grip of a silent martial law." that's very nice and dandy for the opposition leader to say that, but if in the last three and a half months you can mention the name of a single journalist who has disappeared or come under any kind of a threat, i would like to know, because i would like to stand up for that journalist. the need forfree media is absolutely paramount. the government of imran khan, the tehreek—e—insaf, stands by that responsibility. there is a need for bringing some kind of accountability into this whole space of media and social media so that people cannot spread false information. but that cannot be made an excuse for gagging people's expression — right or freedom of expression. all you have to do, stephen,

is watch one evening of television and you'll find out how free the media is, how the government gets ripped into and criticised. on that point, ijust recommend you talk to the veteran and respected journalist ghazi salahuddin, who said recently, he has lived through the dictatorship of general zia, but he says, "right now is one of the worst times i have seen for journalists. we get threatening phone calls, we see journalists being disappeared. we see an atmosphere of fear and self—censorship." so if you want to know what's happening in pakistani media today, maybe you should speak to him. i would be happy to speak to him. i know him very well. i have a lot of respect for him. but, with due respect to ghazi salahuddin, then he's forgotten what has happened. journalists were in jail, they were tortured, there was public flogging ofjournalists. so, with all due respect, maybe he's starting to... maybe his memory starting to fade and he doesn't remember what's going on there. but that should be no benchmark. we should not say we are better... i stand for freedom of media

as much as salahuddin does, and i would be happy to make that phone call to him. and if you stand for a free, well—governed pakistan, very different from what we have seen in the past, where extremism doesn't triumph, how worried are you that imran khan has completely failed to stand up for the rights of aasia bibi since she was released from prison? of course, the supreme court said that she should be released after she'd languished in prison for so many years in a blasphemy case, which the court ultimately dismissed, and yet she hasn't been allowed to leave the country. how disgusted are you, as a minister in the government, by your own government's failure to protect her rights? imran khan's government believes in the rule of law and the supremacy of the law. we believe in the tricameral system of justice. the courts decided what was the right decision. it is not for the government to decide, and the government stood by that decision. so putting any kind of blame on the government on either the release of aasia bibi or her lack of travel abroad, neither of these decisions were taken by pakistan, so you can neither give us credit or discredit for that. these are decisions

for the court to take, and whatever the decision... well, it's not for me... i'm not doling out the credit or the discredits. i am listening to human rights activists, like sherry rehman, who said, "aasia bibi is still suffering profoundly, despite her acquittal. imran khan has lost all credibility. he can't make decisions to uphold the rule of law. his politics revolves around religion and u—turns." things really haven't changed very much at all, have they? maybe sherry rehman has not heard about the fact that those who created a law and order situation after that incident — after that decision was taken, who destroyed public property, who issued threatening statements are facing accountability perhaps for the first time in decades in pakistan. maybe this change has not yet been informed to ms sherry rehman. i would strongly suggest that she should go through the newspapers of the last few weeks and she'll find out

what is happening is truly unprecedented in the last 30 years of pakistan. let's end with a personal note, if we may, minister. you know that there are countries in the west that have offered safe haven to aasia bibi. would you, as a human being, never mind your loyalty to the government, whatever, butjust on the most human and personal level, would you like to see aasia bibi allowed to leave pakistan and make a new life for herself in a safe third country? i would like every citizen of pakistan to be able to live freely and safely, if they chose to do so in pakistan, for them to do so in pakistan, and if they want to live abroad, for them to live abroad. but these decisions on whether something which is not yet fully decided by the supreme court, a final decision on appeal has been taken, whether the travel freedom should be allowed or not is a decision for the court to take, and only for the court today. minister asad umar, i thank you very

much indeed for on hardtalk. hello. there'll be a definite chill in the air over the next couple of days. not only will the air be cold, we have strong winds to contend with, which will exacerbate that chilly feel during the day ahead. it should be dry for most, but not quite for all. a frontal system lingering in western areas bringing some outbreaks of rain here. that front making very little progress, though, because it's running up against this big block of high pressure, and the squeeze between the two will be driving brisk south—easterly winds across the country. it will not feel warm by any stretch of the imagination. now, we're starting off thursday on a largely dry note. still a fair amount of cloud around and a few showers peppering north sea coasts. and our weatherfront bringing cloud and some patchy rain for northern ireland, the far south—west of wales, the far south—west of england. however, we will have this wind to contend with, particularly gusty for some western coastal areas. so, put a thermometer outside, it might say five, six or seven degrees, but when we factor in the wind chill, it will feel more like —1 for the channel islands, freezing for birmingham, one degree in glasgow.

a very chilly—feeling day, leading into a pretty chilly night thursday night into friday. there'll be more in the way of clear, starry skies ahead. the winds easing a little, so that will allow temperatures to drop, particularly across scotland, england and wales. you can see this blue shading on our temperature chart. towns and cities will get down to freezing or a touch below. it could be colder than that in the countryside. not quite as cold across the far west, particularly northern ireland, because here, there'll be more cloud, there'll be some patchy rain. this old weather front still lingering here as we go on through friday. but elsewhere, a decent amount of sunshine. still the potential for one or two showers blowing into north sea coasts. now, these numbers don't look particularly impressive — three, four, five degrees — but by friday, the winds won't be quite as strong, so it may feel a bit less bitter. so as we head towards the weekend, a change because these frontal systems here will have a bit more impetus about them. they will make more progress. they'll bring some wet weather across the country but that rain running into cold air. so just about wherever you are, there could be, for a time, a little bit of snow.

but over higher ground in northern ireland, northern england, and especially scotland, there is the potential forfairly widespread and potentially disruptive snow. we'll have to keep you posted on that one. however, milder air will be wafting in from the south—west all the time, so wintry weather will slowly but surely turn back to wet weather, and eventually all of us will get into the milder air on sunday and monday, but there'll still be some wind and rain at times. hello. this is the briefing. i'm sally bundock. we are live from westminster. the parliamentary party does have confidence. it was here that theresa may won a vote of confidence from her own party, but the challenges over

brexit remain. here is our renewed mission — delivering the brexit that people voted for, bringing the country back together, and building a country that truly works for everyone. the british pm will travel to brussels later today for a european summit. she hopes to find a political solution to the problems her brexit