ISLAMABAD April 19: Exchanges between US Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and Pakistan foreign office appear to be getting nasty with the latest diplomatic repartee from the foreign Office spokesman who accused the American envoy of trying to harm the Pakistan-US relations and said Pakistan was lodging a strong protest with Washington against the ambassador's "foolish and irresponsible utterances".
Pakistan took serious umbrage at the press talk held on Sunday in Kabul by Ambassador Khalilzad in which inter alia he charged: "For us Pakistan to become a sanctuary for these (Taliban and Al Qaeda) people to plan and train (in Pakistan) and to come back with weapons to attack (forces in Afghanistan) is not good".
He has accused whom he described as "remnants of Al Qaeda and Taliban and members of Gulbudin Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami of carrying out cross-border activities from Pakistani territory.
Spokesman Masood Khan told the weekly press briefing that Pakistan rejected all these untrue and unsubstantiated allegations and all this expression (of Khalilzad) that Pakistan should do more to deal with the alleged cross-border movement from the Pakistan side.
"Pakistan is doing more than enough," the spokesman insisted and observed that Mr Khalilzad should not worry on this count. He said it would be helpful if Mr Khalilzad talked less on this issue.
The spokesman said in a terse statement that Mr Khalilzad, who was apparently new to the job of diplomacy and was not an ambassador-at-large nor accredited to Islamabad, had been making statements which impinged upon Pakistan-US relations.
It is strange he is working hard to create misunderstanding between the United States and Pakistan. "We will lodge protest to the US government on the foolish and irresponsible utterance of the US ambassador in Kabul."
He advised Mr Khalilzad that because of his immature diplomacy, he should stop issuing statements and better speak directly to the Pakistan envoy in Kabul or Washington or to call the "highly-professional Ambassador Nancy Powell" in Islamabad if he had a message for the foreign office here.
He said Mr Khalilzad, by issuing statements from Kabul against Pakistan on the issue of war on terrorism with persistent frequency, had been violating the "third-country principle".
"It would be very helpful if he does a little less by talking less. He seems to be suffering from attention deficit disorder," Mr Masood Khan said. "In the beginning, there was indignation in Islamabad, but now we are amused, because we think he is pushing the envelope to seek attention," the foreign office spokesman said.
