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ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: Pakistan said on Monday Indian diplomats would meet a convicted Indian spy on death row in a Lahore jail on Tuesday in the latest of efforts to save his life while the two rival nations are also discussing release of hundreds of each other’s nationals held by them on minor charges.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman also said Pakistani and Indian foreign ministers would meet in Islamabad on October 3-5 in pursuance of the “composite dialogue” peace process between the two countries, after a planned mid-September summit between President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
The meeting between Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri and his Indian counterpart K. Natwar Singh will follow a two-day meeting of the interior secretaries of the two countries that began in New Delhi on Monday and secretary-level talks in Islamabad on September 1.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Naeem Khan told reporters at a news briefing that Indian diplomats had been allowed to meet convict Sarabjit Singh at 11am on Tuesday at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail after Pakistan accepted a New Delhi request for consular access to the man it says carried out deadly bombings as an Indian intelligence agent but regarded innocent by his family.
He did not say how many diplomats would go to Lahore, but Indian sources said the High Commission would send two of its officials to meet Singh, who Pakistan says carried out bomb blasts in Lahore, Faisalabad and Kasur district of the Punjab province after crossing into Pakistan in 1990 as an agent of India’s external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
India requested consular access to Singh last week after some of his close relatives threatened to commit suicides if Pakistan hanged the man they say is an innocent farmer who strayed into Pakistan from his border village in India’s Punjab state while being drunk.
Singh, alias Manjit Singh, was initially sentenced to death by an Anti-Terrorism Court in Punjab and its judgment was later upheld by the Lahore High Court and finally by the Supreme Court on Aug 18.
Although India has not yet formally accepted Singh as an Indian national, the matter has been taken up by the Indian prime minister and parliament members while there was spotlight also on the plight of hundreds of other nationals of the two countries languishing in Indian or Pakistani jail for minor offences or lack of identification by the two governments.
The spokesman refused to comment on a demand by the United Jihad Council Kashmiri guerilla alliance on Sunday that Islamabad seek clemency for alleged Kashmiri militant Mohammad Afzal Guru, who is described innocent by his family but the Indian Supreme Court upheld a death sentence against him for alleged involvement in a deadly attack on Indian parliament in December 2001.
But Mr Khan said Pakistan would make “a cogent, concrete and comprehensive proposal” in the interior secretaries’ meeting in New Delhi for an early release of the prisoners of the two countries.
“This is going to be an important item of discussion between the interior secretaries of Pakistan and India today. This issue has been raised at the leadership level, we will continue to raise it all over, and let me tell you that the interior secretary of Pakistan is going to give a cogent, a concert and a comprehensive proposal to the Indian side for quick release of prisoners of each other,” he said.
He told a questioner he did not know if India had made a specific demand for the extradition of alleged Indian underworld don and fugitive Dawood Ibrahim who, he said, was “in any case...not in Pakistan (but)...living somewhere else”.
He said the two sides had exchanged lists of wanted people in a previous meeting and that Pakistan would give a list this time also although he did not know “what they (Indians) are going to do”.
NO PRESSURE REGARDING QADEER KHAN: Mr Khan told a questioner that Pakistan was under “no pressure from any quarters” about the fate of its top nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan accused of nuclear proliferation and said Islamabad had no more role to play in a UN nuclear watchdog probe about Iran’s nuclear programme.
“Whatever we had gathered from Dr Qadeer Khan we have shared it with...relevant countries and I think they are very appreciative and satisfied with the information that has been provided to them,” he said.
But he said he had no knowledge if Dr Khan was still being questioned by Pakistani interrogators about his role in the alleged nuclear black-market.
He said Islamabad had voluntarily cooperated with the UN International Atomic Emergency Agency (IAEA) by sending its experts and “some outdated components of vintage centrifuges” for independent examination and added that those components had “been returned to Pakistan”.
“Discussions between Pakistan and IAEA officials have taken place on the results of the tests conducted by the IAEA in the presence of our experts,” he said and added that the IAEA would shortly report its findings to its board of governors.
“As far as Pakistan is concerned, we have no further role to play in this regard,” he said about the IAEA probe on whether traces of enriched uranium found in Iran were from Iran’s own equipment or from that of Pakistani origin possibly bought from the black-market.
Asked to clarify a recent statement by Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States Jehangir Karamat, the spokesman said he thought the envoy had complained about certain elements in the US media that were critical of Pakistan although Pakistan-US relations were “on track (and)...excellent”.
He said relationship between the two countries was strategic in nature, was “growing fast” and had no difficulties or problems.
PAKISTANIS HELD IN IRAQ: About the fate of at least eight Pakistanis who were last week reported to have been freed after being kidnapped, the spokesman said an employing Kuwaiti company had now informed Islamabad they were still in Iraqi custody.
Quoting information received from the Kuwaiti company Al- Hamra, the Kuwaiti government, Pakistani embassy in Kuwait and Iraqi ambassadors in Islamabad and Amman, he said only eight Pakistanis had gone missing on a bus, rather than 11 as reported earlier.
Mr Khan had quoted Al-Hamra as saying at his last briefing on Aug 22 that freed Pakistanis as well as some Indians and Egyptians would be transported to Kuwait within 24 hours.
But he said on Monday the company “has now told us that since the bus had gone missing they (Pakistanis and others) were with the Iraqi authorities” at a place called Safran.
He said the Kuwaiti company was in touch with them and added: “Their documentations are being looked at and the Kuwaiti company has assured us that very soon they will be able to travel back to Kuwait.”
Asked whether the Pakistanis were actually not kidnapped but detained by Iraqi authorities, he referred to what he called the difficult situation in Iraq and said: “We have been receiving conflicting information and, therefore, I think we have to await their return to Kuwait.”
AFGHAN REFUGEES: The spokesman said a meeting of a tripartite commission of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees being held in Kabul on Monday would review the progress of Afghan refugee repatriation since its last meeting in May.
He said the agenda included an update of the repatriation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, now estimated at 3.04 million, their registration, closure of their camps, and creation of conditions inside Afghanistan so they could return home at an early date.
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