Minister quits after hug row

PAKISTAN: Pakistan’s Minister of Tourism has handed in her resignation after coming under criticism from a hardline Islamist cleric for hugging her parachute instructor after completing a jump in France, an official said on Tuesday.

Nilofar Bakhtiar, one of three women ministers in the Pakistani cabinet, made the parachute jump in March to raise money for victims of an earthquake that killed 73,000 people in Pakistan in October 2005.

Shortly afterwards, Pakistani newspapers published a photograph of her giving her para-jumping instructor a hug, and a pro-Taliban cleric issued a decree calling on the government to sack her for “obscenity”.

“It is with deep regret that I want to relinquish the charge of the office of minister for tourism,” Bakhtiar wrote in her letter of resignation to the prime minister.

The letter was also faxed to newspapers.

“Despite my exceptional commitment to the cause of tourism in Pakistan, I have taken the decision due to unavoidable circumstances,” she said without elaborating.

Islamabad, Wednesday, Reuters