Tuesday, Jan 21, 2003
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By B. Muralidhar Reddy
However, Pakistan strongly denied India's charges that its intelligence personnel had blocked the flag car. It maintained that New Delhi had "fabricated" the case to cover up its own deeds of "harassment and maltreatment" of Pakistani staffers in India and alleged that it could be part of a design to further vitiate the already tense atmosphere in the region. The Pakistani rebuttal of the allegations came even as the Indian High Commission today sent a second note verbale (protest note) to the Foreign Office complaining about the continued harassment of Mr. Vyas. "At least three vehicles of intelligence agencies are not only trailing my official car but are causing deliberate obstruction even after the complaint on Saturday. Several times from nowhere a vehicle would turn up in the front and brake at high speed," he said. Mr. Vyas was called to the Pakistan Foreign Office in the afternoon to discuss "certain administrative issues" relating to visas. The issue of the protest note sent by the Indian mission on Saturday was not raised, and when Mr. Vyas mentioned about the harassment, he was informed that Pakistani staffers in India from the Acting High Commissioner downwards were being hounded.The Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman, Aziz Ahmed Khan, told a news conference that there was no truth in the Indian allegation and, in fact, it was the Pakistani staff that were at the receiving end in Delhi. He said Pakistan had lodged a formal protest on Jan. 7 with India over the "harassment" of its diplomatic staff in New Delhi. Mr. Khan termed the treatment to the Pakistani diplomats as "wilful harassment" and said that despite the formal written protest with the Indian authorities by Pakistan's Acting High Commissioner, the harassment persisted. "Since we did not want to draw political mileage out of the incident we did not talk about it openly," he said. He said Pakistan always wanted a "tension-free atmosphere" and did not inform the press about the treatment being meted out to its diplomats in New Delhi. Asked to comment on a statement by the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, criticising Pakistani agencies for harassing the Indian diplomat, Mr. Khan said that taking up of the issue by the Prime Minister showed that India was up to "some new kind of game". He alleged that for India it pays dividends to create tension as was evident from its past record. "In the past elections, they resorted to Pakistan-bashing and their treatment of the minorities reflected it all". A statement released earlier by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs deplored what it termed as "motivated and baseless allegations levelled by India accusing Pakistani agencies of harassing the Charge d' Affaires in Islamabad.'' It said: "Pakistan's feelings on this preposterous propaganda gimmick have been conveyed to the Charge d' Affaires.'' ``In fact it was the operatives of the Indian intelligence agencies who were aggressively chasing and harassing Pakistan's Acting High Commissioner in New Delhi, Jalil Abbas Jilani, for the past two weeks. The Pakistan High Commissioner lodged a formal protest with the Indian Ministry of External Affairs on this count on January 7, 2003.'' The statement said: "It is regrettable that even the Indian Prime Minister has thought it appropriate to comment on a non-existent incident. Obviously the Indian Prime Minister was fed concocted stories to cover up for the treatment being meted out to officials of the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. It could well be part of a deliberate design of the Indian establishment to further vitiate an already tense atmosphere in the region.
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