ISLAMABAD (PTI): Pakistan Jan_11 said it would comply with India’s request to reduce its high commission staff in New Delhi but regretted the rejection of Islamabad’s demand to band over the Jinnah house in Bombay.
“We do not question Indian government’s legal competence as the receiving state to prescribe the number of our personnel for the high commission in Delhi and will comply with their demand,” a foreign office spokesman said.
He said New Delhi’s request for a reduction from 150 to 110 personnel was a retaliatory gesture against Islamabad’s demand for reducing the Karachi consulate staff to 20.
On India’s turning down of Islamabad’s proposal to set up “Visa camps” in Bombay (Maharashtra) and Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh), the spokesman said these temporary offices were meant to issue visas to members of divided Muslim families.
Expressing disappointment over the refusal to make the Jinnah house available for the Pak Consulate in Bombay, the spokesman hoped New Delhi would fulfill its “promise” lease the house as reiterated by the then external affairs minister P. V.Narasimha Rao in 1981.
Islamabad had asked New Delhi to reduce the Karachi Consulate staff from 64 to 20 last month, starting that the decision was based on the code of conduct for diplomatic and no diplomatic personnel signed between the two countries in August last year. Now Delhi had then described the step as a “unilateral decision” and said such a step would hurt contacts between the two neighbors.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 15, 1993
