RAWALPINDI: Mr Abdul Waheed Khan, Central Minister for Information, said here today [Feb 22] that there was complete Press freedom in the country and the Constitution of the country enshrined freedom of expression as one of the fundamental rights. The Minister was speaking at a reception given by the Rawalpindi Press Club which was attended by local journalists and officials of the Press Information Department.

The Minister said like all other freedoms, the freedom of expression also had the built-in limitation that it must not impinge on freedom of others. The various laws on the subject, therefore, were not designed to curb freedom but to regulate it. He said an increasingly large number of working journalists were going on foreign trips because care was being taken to include in the Press delegations representatives of all parts of the country.

Mr Waheed Khan referred to reports of `some misinformed foreign journals` who tried to paint a wrong picture about Pakistan and said that there were no restrictions on any journalistic activity in the country. Mr Waheed Khan said `let the facts speak for themselves. Collect all the political stories and political editorials published in this country over the last four to five months and show them to any impartial observer anywhere in Tibet or Timbuctoo and ask him to determine the point whether freedom of Press did or did not exist in Pakistan which allowed all this to be published with impunity`. Agencies