LONDON, Jan 19: Britain and the European Union issued a demarche to Pakistan in December on its blasphemy laws and expressed concern over 19 registered cases of blasphemy in 2005, according to officials here. Dr Kim Howells, a junior minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, told the House of Commons that Britain and the European Union were encouraging the government of Pakistan to either repeal or modify the blasphemy laws in order to prevent these laws from being misused.

Dr Howells was speaking in response to a question in the Commons about representations made to the government of Pakistan on the increasing number of blasphemy cases brought before the courts.

In reply to another question about any representations received from the Christian minority groups in Pakistan, Burma and China, the British minister for trade, Ian Pearson, told the Commons that Britain had not received any recent representations from Christian minority groups in either China or Pakistan.