NEW DELHI, Jan 12: India, blatantly ignoring worldwide calls to improve relations with Pakistan, including a strongly-worded advice by the United States last week, has barred a visit of Punjabi writers from across the border by denying them visas, news reports said on Sunday.

The move, advertised as a measure to fight terrorism, came as US Ambassador in New Delhi, Robert Blackwill, persevered with his belief on Sunday that “a more normal relationship between India and Pakistan is possible to envision. But the issue of (Jammu and Kashmir) must be addressed peacefully.”

Blackwill was apparently seeking to pick up the thread of the argument made forcefully by senior US envoy Richard Haass in Hyderabad on Tuesday when he declared said normalcy was not about absence of war but about a “relationship wherein Indians and Pakistanis from all walks of life can easily travel to the other country for family visits, tourism, sports or business. It should not take more time to fly from New Delhi to Islamabad than it does to fly from Delhi to London.”

However, far from heeding any advice, India has pledged to crackdown on and deport overstaying Pakistanis, describing them as security risk.

Worse, among the first to be denied the visas were human rights activists and Track 2 idealists Asma Jehangir, I.A. Rehman and Mubashir Hasan who were all due to attend the Asian Social Forum international meet in Hyderabad.

On Sunday, The Hindu newspaper reported that 13 eminent Punjabi writers from Pakistan, who were to attend the International Punjabi Writers’ Conference in India, have been denied visa by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

According to Rawail Singh, secretary of the Delhi Government’s Punjabi Academy, which is organizing the conference, “a similar conference is being organized by the Punjabi University at Patiala which had extended invitations directly to the 13 Pakistani writers.

After receiving the invitation the writers had reportedly approached the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad who had asked them to get their invitations routed through the ministry of home affairs in Delhi. But this did not happen.

Eminent writers who were to attend the conference included: Fakhar Zaman, Sughra Sadaf, Kanwal Mushtaq, Iqbal Fareed and Hayaat Ahmad Khan, The Hindu said.