The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 183
167 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN I never had any suspicion that there was any member of the Cabinet who was not completely loyal to him. Subsequently, during my years at The Hague (1954-61), his widow, the Begum Ra'ana Liaqat Ali Khan, who was our Ambassador at The Hague throughout that period, repeated to me several times that her late husband had often said to her that I was the only member of his Cabinet on whom he could rely completely. This came to me as a surprise, and I said so to her, "It was very kind of him, Ra'ana, but I do not take that as a special compliment. After all, one has got to be loyal to one's chief. What merit is there in it?" She said, "Well, he thought there was particular merit in your case, not that he had any reason to suspect that you would not be loyal to him, but because he suspected, he may have had cause to, that some of the others were not quite so loyal. " I said, "I can tell you quite honestly that I never felt that any of my colleagues was not completely loyal to the Prime Minister. " She said, "Well, that is proof of your own complete loyalty, because anyone else who was not quite loyal would not mention anything to you which may have sort of smacked of his loyalty. " We got along extremely well and I particularly appreciated sometimes in his public speeches, sometimes in conversations with others, when I was present, instead of saying "Zafrulla did this, or the Foreign Minister did that," he would refer to me as "My Foreign Minister. " I was always deeply touched by the pronoun, "my Foreign Minister," and now, thinking back, after his tragic end, I feel he identified himself more completely with himself than perhaps I was conscious of. Our relationship was not only intimate; it was affectionate on his part, and he rose steadily in my estimation, so that the news of his assassination, which reached me in New York - it was given to me over the telephone by a press correspondent - came as a very great personal shock. I recall the observation I made immediately to the correspondent: "The hand that released that bullet has released a whole collection of misfortunes. You cannot assess at the moment what this tragedy might mean to us. " That was the beginning of the deterioration in the political field which continued till the take over by the present President in October, 1958. Question : Would you care to say something, Sir, about your activities as Foreign Minister in these first four years of Pakistan ?