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Friday March 29, 2024

Pakistan invites, India denies visa to CTBTO executive secretary

By Mariana Baabar
September 24, 2016

 ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) is fuming, but not in the direction of Jati Umrah, but rather towards the Constitution Avenue and in particular at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

“When India had the guts and courage to deny a visa to Lassina Zerbo, Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), why has the Foreign Office here invited him?” questioned PTI leader Dr Shireen Mazari, an expert on security issues.

Mazari told The News: “Pakistan has observer status at the CTBTO. Zerbo wanted to come to Pakistan unofficially, as we are not signatories to the CTBT and India had earlier refused to allow him official invite, but Tariq Fatemi (SAPM) met him and issued him an official invite, thereby placing Pakistan in a position of unnecessary publicity and pressure at a most crucial time when the NSG issue is coming centre stage again”.

She was insistent that Pakistan appears to have no coordinated policy on these matters as this invitation was given at a personal level without any institutional approval.  When the spokesman at the Foreign Office was contacted he responded: “I am not aware of this. I will have to check”.

Zerbo showed his willingness to come to Pakistan when he met with Pakistani journalists he had invited to his headquarters.  “Every little step counts. My target is not to get this job done during my tenure. However, any progress towards this goal done under my leadership is my success. We cannot give any timelines but I know eventually better sense will prevail as everybody wants to engage to make this world a safer place to live in”, he had told the journalists.

The CTBTO is an international organization located in Vienna, Austria, and  before the CTBT can be enforced, eight countries with nukes still need to sign and ratify the document. These include the United States, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan.

Zerbo, desperate to visit Pakistan, had some time back tweeted: “If invited we'd be on the next flight to #Islamabad to engage #Pakistan in a dialogue on the #CTBT”. Upset at being denied entry into India, Zerbo had told the media that his secretary had used his UN passport for an Indian visa.

“I would have used my Burkina passport – because Delhi is a good friend to Burkina Faso – and then you (India) would welcome me. What I hold against Delhi, and you can put that in writing, they stopped me from bringing my wife on Valentine’s Day at Taj Mahal. And that’s a disaster. Visa was never granted and I think that Indian diplomats are smart enough to not put that as a reason for not inviting – for not having the visa on my passport”.

He also told Pakistani journalists that Pakistan must take a leadership role in South Asia by signing Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and let India follow suit. “It is our collective responsibility to make this world a safer place for the sake of our next generations. Pakistan must benefit from the wealth of knowledge available with the CTBTO by gaining full and direct access to data from all 300 CTBTO stations worldwide to study earthquakes, storm systems and early warnings about food insecurity”, he added.