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Pak. not to downgrade mission

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD FEB. 10. Pakistan said today that it would send a replacement for Jalil Abbas Jilani, its expelled envoy to New Delhi.

The Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman, Aziz Ahmed Khan, told correspondents at his weekly briefing that Pakistan was not in favour of downgrading its mission in New Delhi. Islamabad was against even downsizing the High Commission as it wanted restoration of full diplomatic ties and resumption of dialogue. While announcing the expulsion of Mr. Jilani and four others, New Delhi had said that there would be no replacements for the staffers. In its retaliatory move, Islamabad applied the same ceiling in the case of the Indian mission. As a result, the strength in both missions stands reduced to 47. In the third week of January it came down from 55 to 51 after both sides expelled four staffers each. Before that it was halved in the last week of December 2001.

Interestingly, Mr. Khan mentioned that the expelled Acting High Commissioner of India, Sudhir Vyas, was in Pakistan Foreign Office recently to discuss the issue of visa to Mr. Jilani's successor and other vacant posts in the missions on both sides. They had even agreed on February 7 for clearance of the pending visas. Mr. Jilani had completed his tenure and Pakistan, in November 2002, had given the name of Munawar Saeed Bhatty as his successor. Similarly, the tenure of Mr. Vyas had ended long ago and India had sought visa for T.C.A. Raghavan as his replacement. Amid the drama involving the expulsion of four staffers on both sides in the fourth week of January, Pakistan had agreed to clear the pending applications for assignment visas of Indian officials on a reciprocal basis.

It is against this background that the announcement made by New Delhi that it was willing to give a "visa at the earliest" for Mr. Jilani's replacement has come as a surprise.

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