LAHORE: The Punjab government has offered 65 acre (520 kanal) to the United States Consulate to shift its offices outside the city and negotiations being held between the officials of the both sides for the last couple of months have entered into a final round.

Sources in the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) say the decision to offer this chunk of land was taken after both the sides agreed that shifting the consulate to a place far from the city area was the need of the hour from the security point of view.

“The US Consulate officials had requested the Punjab government to allocate land a bit away from the main city that could be secured. Therefore, we offered 65 acre land in the proposed diplomatic enclave in the LDA City,” an LDA official told Dawn on Sunday.

The land of seven villages-- Kahna, Kacha, Thay Panju, Sidhar, Halloki, Rakh Jhedu and Toor Warraich –is being acquired for this mega housing project. The scheme has 2,000 kanals land for a diplomatic enclave and the 520 kanal of it has been offered to the US Consulate for its building.

“The land allocated for the new US Consulate exists exactly in Sidhar where the LDA has completed 80pc acquisition of the land. The total land being acquired in this village is about 4,000 kanal. We have so far acquired 3,500 kanal. The rest of 500 kanal will be acquired soon,” the official explained.

He said that besides the US, the officials of others countries, including Saudi Arabia and China, were also interested in establishing their consulates/diplomatic missions at the proposed diplomatic enclave. Sometime back, the Chinese ambassador visited the area and sought space for the Chinese consulate there. Near the diplomatic enclave, an educational city has also been proposed where leading private education groups and individuals had shown their interest in establishing schools and colleges, the official claimed.

He said the enclave area was in the scheme’s phase-1, comprising about 24,000 kanal.

“We are planning to start development work in the phase-1 soon after acquiring the remaining land.”

It may be mentioned that both the government and US officials had agreed to shift the existing US Consulate near Shimal Hill to a new place due to the security situation caused by demonstrations.

In September 2012, a clash had erupted between the police and workers of the Majlis-i-Wahdat-i-Muslimeen when they, during a protest against a profane film, had tried to march on the consulate. The protesters had forced their way through many pickets before being stopped by police less than 50 metre away from the consulate. As the police baton-charged the marchers, some protesters managed to sneak through the last barrier in a bid to forcibly enter the building and the place turned into a battlefield. Additional force had to be called to control the situation. Some protesters, who had succeeded in climbing up concrete barriers, set the US flag on fire and hoisted their flag on the roof of the building.

Published in Dawn, June 20th, 2016