NEW DELHI, April 8: - The speaker of India’s lower house of parliament has cancelled a visit to Australia following Canberra’s refusal to exempt him from security checks before boarding a flight, Indian and Australian officials said on Friday.

“The speaker Somnath Chatterjee is entitled to a waiver of pre-embarkation security checks,” the Indian official said. “He is listed in the category of VIPs exempt from personal frisking before boarding a flight.”

Chatterjee, currently in Manila for the Inter-Parliamentary Union, was to go on to Australia for a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament Association, he said.

But he called off the visit on Thursday when Canberra refused to waive the security check despite Chatterjee routing a request through the Indian embassy to the Australian government to do so.

“My country’s prestige is at stake and I don’t want to compromise on it. I would prefer not to go,” Chatterjee was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India news agency.

“As speaker of the Lok Sabha of India if I am not trusted in any of the countries, then I should not go there.

“When we have exempted heads of government, heads of state and presiding officers from frisking this could be reciprocated by others,” he said.

John Fisher, a spokesman for the Australian embassy in New Delhi, confirmed on Friday that Chatterjee had called off his visit because of the security check issue.

“We understand he’s cancelled... He made this decision despite assurances the security searches would have been conducted in private for him and his wife,” Fisher said.—AFP