LAHORE, Jan 13: Pakistan will be willing to extend any cooperation to the United States to help the Immigration and Naturalization Service achieve its targets provided the Pakistanis living in the US are exempted from registration, Interior Minister Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat said on Monday.

Talking to Dawn at his office here, he said there was a very strong reaction in Pakistan against the treatment being meted out to the Pakistanis in the US. He said it would be wrong to assume that every Pakistani living in the US was linked with the al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Most of them, like people from many other countries of the world, had gone to America in search of jobs and were not even remotely linked with any terrorist network.

Therefore, the minister said, it would be unfair on the part of the US authorities to subject such people to humiliation through the INS.

Pakistan, he recalled, had played a vital role in the US-led war on terrorism and would continue to stand on the side of the US in the future to curb the menace. But, he said, it was a genuine desire of the government that the Pakistanis in the US should not be made to face the kind of hardships they were having to do at the hands of the INS.

Answering a question, the minister said nobody arrested during recent raids in various parts of the country would be extradited except when violation of some international law was established in court.

The government had not extradited the accused involved in the murder of an American journalist and there was no question of anybody else being handed over to any foreign country, he said.

He insisted that FBI operatives were not involved in any raid anywhere in the country and allegations being levelled by political parties in this regard were unfounded. No FBI man knew which person was living in which part of Pakistan and thus there was no question of its operatives being able to raid any house.

In response to a question, the interior minister, who is also senior vice-chairman of the P-5, said his faction was cooperating with the PML-Q to strengthen parliamentary democracy. In case the PML-Q took any step which was against parliamentary democracy or interests of the country and people, the P-5 would be at liberty to review its policy.

Answering a question, the interior minister said if Ms Bhutto wanted a political settlement or withdrawal of cases against her, she would have to approach the government. “If she prefers party interests to that of her own, a settlement will be possible”, he said, without further elaboration.

Makhdoom said unless some settlement was reached, no case against the self-exiled former prime minister would be taken back as all of them were pending with courts. The PPP chairperson would have to prove her innocence before courts, he emphasized.

According to the minister the relief given to Mr Asif Ali Zardari during the past couple of months had not been given in the past six years. It was during the past few weeks, he said, that the spouse of the PPP chairperson was released on parole and also allowed to meet his children.

Rejecting opposition parties’ stand that the Legal Framework Order was not part of the Constitution and Gen Musharraf not the legitimate president, the interior minister said suchutterances could not change the ground realities.

He said parliament was the right forum for opposition parties to debate such issues.