15 August 2004	Sunday	28 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

ISLAMABAD, Aug 14: Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri promised in the National Assembly on Friday to take up issue with London after Education Minister Zobaida Jalal said her nephew had died before he could get a British visa for medical treatment.

The foreign minister expressed sympathies with the education minister and said he would direct Pakistan's high commissioner in London to take up the matter with the British foreign office.

But, the education minister invited criticism from some opposition members who ridiculed her for raising a personal issue on the assembly floor through a point of order in which she accused the British High Commission of being unresponsive to her calls to issue the visa in what she called a genuine case of medical emergency.

Ms Jalal, while narrating her attempts to get the case processed expeditiously, said the British mission did not feel it appropriate even to return the calls of a federal minister. "I did not get any call-back," she said and wondered what would be response to ordinary citizens in similar cases.

The minister said top ranking British diplomats declined to influence the visa officer to expedite the procedural requirements for the visa applied by her nephew.

"The British High Commission cannot influence the visa officer," the minister quoted an unspecified British diplomat as telling her.

She said the British High Commission was given all the relevant documents and bank statements but owing to delay in processing the visa, the person died 18 days after applying for it leaving behind five children and other dependents.

Ms Jalal said if a minister of a sovereign country was treated in such a way by the British High Commission, the ordeal of an ordinary citizen could well be imagined.

The minister's nephew, Ghulam Muhammad, was advised treatment in the Cromwell Hospital of UK.

Sources said British High Commissioner Mark Lyall Grant was called to the Foreign Office and was informed of the concern expressed by the education minister.

The minister, the sources said, had also written to Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the foreign minister and Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat.

The complaint by the minister came only weeks after Mr Kasuri was praised by legislators during the previous session of the assembly last month when he informed them that after efforts of his ministry the British High Commission had introduced a new procedure to facilitate visas for parliamentarians and their families.

"This positive development took place as a result of the efforts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and my personal interventions," Mr Kasuri had said in a policy statement in the assembly then.

He had said then that all visa requests by parliamentarians would be processed within seven days while visas for official business would normally take five working days.

Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain, making his observations on the issue raised by the education minister, said, "you are the government." He said the minister was raising the issue in the lower house and it amounted to joint responsibility of the cabinet.

Ms Jalal, who had earlier said that she was not speaking as a minister but as an ordinary citizen, came under fire from the opposition for raising a "personal issue."

PML-N leader, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, said in the past 20 years he did not see a federal minister saying on the floor of the House that a personal matter was being raised. He said this was in violation of National Assembly rules that a minister started saying that her nephew did not get the visa from a foreign mission.

He said the minister should not wash the dirty linen in the National Assembly as it was highly derogatory of the House.

Another PML-N member, Khawaja Asif, said the minister brought her "personal grievance" to the House.

The speaker said the point raised by Chaudhry Nisar was right but he allowed the floor to the education minister after getting a sense of the House.

Earlier, the speaker had disallowed MNA Noor Jahan Panezai and the education minister to raise the issue on a point of order saying it was in violation of rules.

However, later on the intervention of the leader of the house, prime minister Shujaat Hussain, allowed Ms Jalal and Ms Panezai to speak on the issue on two separate points of order as the government accommodated the opposition to speak on Balochistan in relaxation of rules.