LAHORE, Jan 18: Foreign Minister Mian Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri on Saturday left for a 12-day visit to the US to “make all possible efforts to prevent deportation of Pakistanis living there illegally” at a time when the host had refused to exempt the entire community from registration under the INS laws.

The minister told Dawn before boarding a commercial PIA flight to New York that he would be meeting his US counterpart Colin Powell on Jan 29 to discuss the problems of Pakistanis in the US and a wide range of other issues.

He said Pakistan’s ambassador Ashraf Jehangir Qazi was also trying to organize meetings with various secretaries and Congressmen.

Upset by reports that thousands of Pakistanis in the US were facing hardships because of the INS laws, the minister said he would try to persuade the US authorities to be soft on them because of the leading role Pakistan had played in the US-led war on terror. Those living there illegally should not be deported, or the number of deportations should be minimum, he said.

The minister said Pakistanis who were not involved in activities threatening the security of the US should also not be asked to leave the country.

Mr Kasuri said he would urge the host country that illegal Pakistani immigrants who had already applied for regularization of their stay under the amnesty law should not be made to register themselves. Similarly, those who had applied for labour certification should also be exempted from INS laws.

The minister said the US, like every other country, had the right to make laws for its security. He said security concerns in US had heightened after the Sept 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon and during the next few years it planned to make registration of people from all countries mandatory.

Mr Kasuri said when he had been extended invitation for a visit to the US, the situation was quite different. At the time, he said, Pak-US defence ties, nuclearization of South Asia, Indian role in forcing Pakistan to postpone the SAARC summit and relations with Afghanistan formed the agenda.

He said these issues would still come up for discussion at meetings with the US authorities, but the INS laws had changed the situation.

Replying to a question, the minister said Pakistan wanted a peaceful solution of the Iraq problem, as a US-led attack would have an adverse effect on all Islamic countries, including Pakistan.

He said reports submitted by UN inspectors so far showed that no weapons of mass destruction had been recovered and thus the situation was not grave. If the UN Security Council also held the same view, an attack could be avoided. In that case, he said, Pakistan would want the world body to lift the sanctions on Iraq, which were affecting people more than the rulers.

Pakistan, the foreign minister said, would go by the UN resolutions just as it was calling for implementation of the world body resolutions on Kashmir.