ISLAMABAD, April 17: Pakistani officials are optimistic that the pending issue of release of Pakistanis detained in Afghanistan will be resolved during President Hamid Karzai’s visit here next week.

“We are hopeful that the detained Pakistanis will be freed soon,” a senior bureaucrat involved in the ongoing negotiations told Dawn on Thursday.

He said efforts were being made to bring them all back in one go.

President Karzai had last month decreed the release of all Pakistanis detained in Afghanistan since the events of October and November 2001. However, even after the passage of more than a month, they have not been set free.

Apparently the cause of delay has been the US government’s insistence that all prisoners be first screened for security clearance by its military personnel based in Afghanistan.

Reports suggest that so far some 400 Pakistanis have been set free by the Karzai government.

According to official estimates, there are still around 800 Pakistanis languishing in different prisons in Afghanistan.

Most of them have been detained in the Shabarghan prison in northern Afghanistan, some 80 miles west of Mazar-i-Sharif.

The government’s position has been that most of the Pakistanis captured had no links with the Taliban or Al Qaeda.