India protests Pak harassment of senior diplomat

NEW DELHI: India has lodged a strong protest with Pakistan over the "unprecedented harassment" of its charge d''affaires (CDA) in Islamabad, Sudhir Vyas, whose official vehicle flying the Indian flag was repeatedly blocked on Saturday and again on Monday, and demanded that the neighbour follow diplomatic norms and not vitiate bilateral ties further.
Vyas is known for his polite behaviour and patient handling of situations under severe provocation. His continued harassment, even as India was lodging its protest, indicated heightened tension.
But external affairs ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna ruled out any move to recall Vyas, who has been holding charge after high commissioner Vijay Nambiar was recalled to highlight the involvement of Pak-trained terrorists in the attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001.
Frustration at the US''s indifference to its demand that India be pressured to come to the negotiation table, and alarm at the clamour at home for improving economic ties with India pending solution of other issues are the reasons being cited in diplomatic circles for the spurt in violent Pak behaviour.
The incidents are not rare in that a number of Indian military attaches and counsellors posted in Pakistan have been harassed, humiliated and even beaten up.
New Delhi on Monday handed over a representative list of such recent incidents, seven of them against one diplomat, Vipin Handa, alone, to Pakistan''s acting high commissioner here, Jalil Abbas Jilani.
Yet, two days after the first incident against Vyas, Islamabad professed innocence and instead came up with a ''disclosure'' that it was Jilani, who was being "aggressively chased and harassed by Indian intelligence agencies for almost two weeks".
A press release by the Pakistan High Commission here did not explain why Islamabad took so long, and waited for Saturday''s incident in Islamabad, to make a revelation that it had actually lodged a formal protest with the Indian foreign office regarding Jilani on January 7.
The press release also claimed that the Islamabad incidents were "non-existent". But Sarna called the Pakistani counter-charge "motivated and baseless", adding: "We have it from our CDA that these incidents happened." He was unaware of any Pakistani protest lodged here. Jilani was summoned to South Block on Monday afternoon and in a note verbale given to him, Arun Kumar Singh, MEA''s joint secretary in charge of the Pakistan desk, said: "Such harassment is unprecedented and amounts to a clear attempt by Pakistan''s intelligence services to thwart the CDA in the performance of his diplomatic duties."
Besides displaying a lack of normal courtesy to the national flag of the accredited country, in this case the Indian flag flying on the CDA''s car, "the harassment represents gross violation of the bilateral code of conduct for treatment of diplomatic personnel in India and Pakistan signed by the two countries in 1992 as well as international norms, including the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations of 1961".
Asked about the timing of the incident, he said: "Any timing of such incidents is unfortunate."
Vyas and his wife were travelling in his official vehicle when the Pakistani sleuths forcibly prevented them from proceeding for their official engagements on Saturday.
The CDA''s car was blocked before his residence and forcibly prevented from leaving on two occasions when he and his wife were proceeding to attend official diplomatic engagements at the Malaysian and Nepalese missions, the spokesman said.
He said when the flag car was finally able to leave the residence, it was forcibly stopped and boxed in by four vehicles and two motorcycles repeatedly on the main roads while he was proceeding to the functions and returning from there.
"At one point even after 11 p.m., the car was boxed in for about 45 minutes and when they returned, the intelligence personnel attempted to block the entrance gate to his residence by parking a vehicle in front of the gate," Sarna said.