ISLAMABAD, 15 April 2003 — The Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan has ceased to function since the fall of Baghdad to the coalition forces, the Foreign Office here said yesterday.
“The government which sent the diplomats of that country is no longer in control. So obviously there is a situation of limbo as far as the embassy is concerned,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told a press conference.
Pakistan has however not expelled the Iraqi diplomats, the spokesman said, despite two requests from Washington to all countries hosting Iraqi missions to do so.
“It is for the Iraqi diplomats to decide what they wish to do. As far as we are concerned, keeping in view the Islamic tradition of hospitality, we would wait till they have decided what they have to do for themselves,” Khan said.
He said the Iraqi diplomats were not operating because the previous government of President Saddam Hussein “is not there.”
He said Iraqi diplomats would enjoy diplomatic immunity “so long as they are here.”
Khan said since “embassies represent countries and not governments”, the Iraqi mission remained in Pakistan but it was “not functioning.”
The United States has alleged that the Iraqi embassy in Islamabad was the liaison point between Al-Qaeda and Baghdad during the late 1990s when the Taleban were in power in Afghanistan.
In the same briefing, Khan declared that Pakistan did not possess any weapons of mass destruction (WMD) other than nuclear arms.
Pakistan does not believe in “any form of WMD”, said Khan.
“We don’t have them, and we support all international conventions and resolutions in this regard,” Khan told reporters in regard to warnings from Washington against states in possession of WMDs.
Pakistan went public with its nuclear capability in May 1998 when it conducted six nuclear tests in response to those conducted by India in the same month.
Washington and major European countries in reaction imposed economic sanctions on both countries but removed them once Pakistan joined the international war against terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 kamikazi attacks in the United States.
