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U.S. Revokes Visa Of Pakistani Senator
Musharraf Critic Was to Be State Dept. Guest
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 25, 2006; Page A03
The Bush administration has withdrawn an invitation to a Pakistani lawmaker
and a prominent critic of President Pervez Musharraf who was to arrive in
the United States today as a guest of the State Department, setting off
charges that the action came at the behest of the Pakistani government.
Sana Ullah Baloch, who had been invited by the State Department last year
and issued a visa, was told recently by the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad that
he could not attend a State Department-sponsored program on accountability
in government and business and that a visa he had already received had been
revoked.
American officials first told Baloch in a
letter sent March 13 that they had taken the action because of "a recent
withdrawal in funding which made it necessary for us to scale back the
program."
In an interview Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Nancy Beck said the
problem was not funding but rather new information that was received after
Baloch had been approved that "led us to believe he was not eligible for a
visa." She declined to elaborate.
The incident has drawn sharp parallels with the case of Mukhtar Mai, a woman
gang-raped in 2002 by a village council in Pakistan, who was prevented by
the Pakistani government from traveling to the United States last summer to
publicize her story. The government later relented.
The changing explanations fueled suspicion among some South Asia experts in
Washington that Pakistan, a U.S. ally in the hunt for al-Qaeda leaders,
asked the Bush administration not to permit Baloch to come to the United
States. Baloch has been highly critical of Musharraf's handling of an
intensifying conflict in Baluchistan, a restive province that Baloch
represents in the national parliament.
"What is truly outrageous about his situation is this was a
U.S.-government-sponsored trip," said Michael McFaul, a senior fellow at the
Hoover Institution in Washington, who spent three weeks with Baloch at a
meeting at Stanford University aimed at promoting democracy and human
rights. "Since when do we let other countries decide whom we should invite
to our country?"
"We are all embarrassed because we all suspect the same thing, but so far
the questions we have asked the administration remain unanswered," said
Frederic Grare, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
which was forced to cancel next week's event for Baloch.
Amnesty International's advocacy director for Asia, T. Kumar, said the group
would bring the issue to the attention of Congress: "This is a coverup. This
is a war on terror issue, and they need Pakistan."
Baloch's allies note that they have no direct evidence of their claims, and
the Pakistani government and the State Department deny that Pakistan was
involved.
Tariq Azim Khan, one of Baloch's fellow senators and a spokesman for the
Pakistani government, joked that "it is surprising to note that Pakistan has
that much sway with the State Department and the American Embassy in
Islamabad."
Baloch was welcome to express his views anywhere, Khan said, adding that the
Pakistani government itself had included the critic in many
interparliamentary delegations. Khan described the unrest in Baluchistan as
the work of a tiny but vocal minority, led by people such as Baloch, who
Khan charged was upset because traditional roles of patronage were being
sidelined by development programs.
Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department analyst for Afghanistan who now
works for the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the department's
intelligence analysts may have learned something problematic about Baloch.
But Selig Harrison, author of "In Afghanistan's Shadow," a book on Baluch
nationalism, said that absent evidence, "one would discount that as simply a
cover story."
In an interview via cellphone, Baloch said that his province -- the largest
in Pakistan -- was being exploited for its natural resources, even as the
region was starved of development funds. The province borders Iran and
Afghanistan and is strategically important to oil-shipping lanes. Baloch
said locals want more authority but were being undermined by the Pakistani
government's leverage of radical Islam in the liberal-minded region.
"They don't want to allow any Baluch political activist to get in touch with
the international community regarding the human rights violations in
Baluchistan," he said, adding that about 600 people had been killed in
recent months.
Source: Washington Post
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