Pak calls back its high comr, won’t return soon: Media report

New Delhi: With simmering tensions between the two countries, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India, called back for a meeting to discuss diplomatic tensions, won’t be returning any time soon, said a media report.
Both India and Pakistan have accused each other of harassing one other’s diplomats and making it difficult to work or even live peacefully, mentioned the report published in The Times of India.
Quoting the Pakistan foreign ministry source, the report said, the Pakistan envoy, Sohail Mahmood, who was called back home on Thursday, was expected to return to India in a few days, but he won’t “until Indian secret agencies stop harassing …(Pakistani) diplomatic staff and their families”.
“Children have never been harassed even when two countries have had the worst of relationship,” report quoted an official as saying, who as per it added that under the circumstances it was not possible for Mahmood to operate out of New Delhi.
That means Mahmood will stay back in Pakistan indefinitely, the source said, harking back to the situation in 2002 when the two countries recalled their respective high commissioners following the attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001, mentioned the report.
According to Pakistan, while aggressive tailing has happened in the past two days, the “nature, scale and intensity” of recent incidents of alleged harassment by Indian authorities has never been witnessed before, the report said.
In its latest note verbale, Pakistan said that despite the matter being brought to the attention of foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale, such incidents had continued, mentioned the report.