India expels Pak embassy staffer

India expels Pak embassy staffer
JYOTI MALHOTRA

New Delhi, Jan 19: It was India's turn today to expel a staffer of the Pakistan High Commission here for spying, even as it began to step up the heat internationally to show Pakistan's direct complicity in the hijacking of IC-814.

Pakistan's deputy high commissioner to India Akbar Zeb was unusually summoned twice to the Ministry of External Affairs today, the first time to protest the expulsion of P Moses, a staffer in the Indian mission in Islamabad, and the second time to declare that a Pakistani staffer in the mission in Delhi had been ``indulging in activities incompatible with his status.''

Unlike Moses, though, who was beaten up by the Pakistani authorities and accused of attempting to ``blow up'' the Rawalpindi market, Shabir Hussain Shah is being expelled by New Delhi without the attendant brutality inflicted on Moses. The Pakistani staffer has been given one week to leave the country.

Zeb was reminded by the Ministry of External Affairs of New Delhi's public condemnation of Pakistan's role as a``state sponsor of terrorism'' and that it was ``ironical'' that Islamabad was making similar allegations about India by ``extracting so-called confessions under duress'' from Moses.

Meanwhile, New Delhi is also stepping up the heat internationally to show Pakistan's direct ``hand'' in the hijacking of IC-814, and has written to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), asking it to pressurise Islamabad to fulfill its obligations and extradite the hijackers to India.

The note handed over to the ICAO authorities two days ago points out that since Pakistan is also a state party to the Montreal and Hague anti-hijacking conventions of 1971 and 1970 respectively, it was obliged to prosecute the offenders and ``inform ICAO about the steps it has taken in this regard.''

Simultaneously, New Delhi seems to be cashing in its diplomatic promissory notes it won abroad, especially by the governments whose nationals were on board IC-814, for ending the crisis without major loss of life.

Primarily, NewDelhi's letter to the ICAO states that since the aircraft was registered in India, New Delhi had ``jurisdiction'' over the offences committed on board IC-814.

``The hijackers are Pakistani nationals. We have also reiterated that the hijackers are currently in Pakistan, which has the legal obligation as a state party to (the Montreal and Hague conventions of 1971 and 1970, respectively), take them under custody and extradite them to India,'' the spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs said.