ISLAMABAD, April 8: Everyone – the city managers, the police, the citizens and the diplomatic community – want the foreign missions move out of Islamabad’s residential areas and into the security of the Diplomatic Enclave but they remain stay put. Why?

Sources in the police and the Capital Development Authority (CDA) said that “inconsistent policies” of the CDA were responsible for the continuing discomfort of all.

Many foreign missions sought land in the Diplomatic Enclave for constructing their building but CDA could provide none because its land disputes with locals stalled the civic agency’s plan to enlarge the enclave.

And the plans of missions already in the enclave to expand upward to accommodate their subsidiary offices operating in the city were frustrated when CDA suddenly changed its rule that allowed seven-storey structures in the enclave to four storeys.

A senior officer in the CDA’s Building Control Section (BCS) admitted to Dawn that “the CDA cannot provide plots for embassies in new Diplomatic Enclave because it has not been able to acquire land from the locals and new guidelines from an intelligence agency barred us from allowing embassies to rise more than four storeys”.

Another source said it was the US embassy’s plan to go high that provoked the restriction but it has hit the embassies of Turkey and Bangladesh also. They have been told the permission granted to them earlier has been revised.

In a letter to the CDA Board, the BCS suggested to leave the “sensitive” decisions regarding the foreign missions to the federal government.

“The letter will be sent to the cabinet division for forwarding it to the foreign office so that the decision comes from the government level,” a CDA official said.

CDA’s Building Regulations-2007, allowed ground plus seven storeys in the Diplomatic Enclave. The Malaysian embassy stands five-storey high but US embassy was told not to rise above four storeys after its plan for higher structure had been approved and was being implemented.

However, CDA Chairman Farkhand Iqbal was nonchalant about such vexing issues.

There was “no apparent problem” in acquiring land for enlarging the Diplomatic Enclave, he told Dawn.

“We are giving plots to embassies in Phase II of the enclave,” he said. About the new restriction on the height of the embassies, the CDA chief said: “A new policy is being framed under which ground plus four storeys will be allowed in the Diplomatic Enclave rather than ground plus seven.”

Many of the foreign missions, occupying 70 buildings in the city, want to move out and have applied for land in Phase II of the enclave. The embassies and foreign missions functioning in residential areas belong to Algeria, Norway, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria, Hungary, Denmark, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Philippines, Belgium, Sudan, Oman, Libya, Brazil, Romania, Afghanistan, Thailand, Bangladesh, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Holland, Korea, Portugal and Portugal (Chancery), British Council, Greece, Republic of Northern Cyprus, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Finland and Latvia, UNDP and UN.

Security agencies treat all foreign missions located outside the Diplomatic Enclave as “Enclosed Restricted Areas” and measures taken to guard them create nuisance for the citizens.

More than a dozen foreign missions have approached the CDA for moving into the Diplomatic Enclave since a suicide attack on the Danish embassy in June 2008 killed eight people.The CDA was working on development of an extension of Diplomatic Enclave on an area measuring 788.40 acres.