Islamabad: Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan in another controversial statement said that if the country's establishment does not make right decisions, the country could split into three parts and also lose its nuclear deterrent capabilities.

The ousted PM made these remarks in an interview with a private television channel.

The TV interviewer asked Imran Khan, "If the establishment is not with you irrespective of your popularity as was the case with Benazir Bhutto, you will not be able to come back in power. Keeping this in mind, what is your future strategy?"

"The actual problem here is of Pakistan and establishment. If the establishment does not take the right decision, then I will give it to you in writing that they will be destroyed, and the armed forces will be the first ones to be devastated," he told the interviewer adding, "Pakistan will be broken in three parts".

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan warned that once the country's economy is destroyed, it would go in default, and the world would ask Pakistan to move towards denuclearisation -- as was done to Ukraine in the 1990s, reported The News International.

He also said that Pakistan is on the brink of "self-destruction" and will go "bankrupt."

Reacting to the former premier's comments, former president Asif Ali Zardari slammed Khan and said that no Pakistani could talk of tearing this country apart.

"This language is not of a Pakistani but of Modi. Imran Khan's power is not everything in the world, be brave and learn to stand on your feet and do politics now," he said.

Zardari directed the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) workers to protest the remarks of Imran Khan throughout the country. The PPP coalition partner Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) leader Talal Chaudhry said that having lost power, Imran Khan has started talking about the country breaking up and losing nuclear assets.

"We want the Supreme Court to answer whether or not we have the fundamental right to hold a peaceful protest. We will announce the date for our next long march as soon as the apex court rules on the petition," he told a social media conference in the provincial capital, as per the media portal.

This comes in the context of the federal as well as Punjab governments resorting to the use of force against the participants of the Imran Khan's so-called Azadi March on May 25 to protest the "corrupt and imported" Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government.