Pakistani Human Rights Minister Shirin Mazari retracted comments in which she accused French President Emmanuel Macron of treating Muslims in France as the Nazis' treatment of Jews before and during World War II, after that angered the French government.
In a tweet attached to an article she posted on Twitter, Mazari accused President Macron of "treating Muslims with what the Nazis used to attach to Jews," saying that Muslim children had identification numbers just as Jews were forced to put a yellow star on their clothes in order to identify them.
On Sunday, Mazari said she deleted the previous tweet, and posted a new tweet in which it indicated a correction to the article attached to it on the situation of Muslims in France.
She added that the French ambassador to her country had warned her to correct the information contained in the article.
Mazari published the comments about the treatment of Muslims in France in light of the campaign launched by the French President against what he describes as Islamic extremism in his country, following two attacks in Paris and Nice, which left 4 people dead on the background of the cartoons of the Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace.
Paris had strongly condemned what it said were abhorrent and false statements made by the Pakistani minister about Macron and his relations with Muslims in France.
In a statement issued on Saturday evening, a spokeswoman for the French Foreign Ministry said that a member of the Pakistani government had uttered very shocking and insulting words against the President of the Republic and France, describing these statements as abhorrent, and as shameless lies.
The spokeswoman added that Pakistan should correct these statements and return to the path of dialogue based on respect.
For his part, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described the comments about Macron as unacceptable, and called for Minister Sherine Mazari's tweet to be deleted from Twitter.
The cartoons of the messenger sparked official and public condemnation in Pakistan, and the Pakistani parliament in late October adopted a resolution calling on the government to expel the French ambassador.