Burney rejects apology from red-faced India

New Delhi: An upset Ansar Burney, former Pakistani human rights minister, on Saturday demanded that India come out with the real story of the circumstances in which he was sent back soon after landing in Delhi on an Emirates flight from London late on Friday evening.
Burney, who has fought the Pakistani establishment for clemency for Indian death row prisoners Kashmir Singh and Sarabjit Singh, was scheduled to speak at an anti-terrorism conference in Delhi on Sunday.
As the organisers and Sarabjit’s family waited for him at the airport, Burney was packed off to London on the return flight. The story was reported in some of the later editions of Hindustan Times.
In a statement on Saturday, the home ministry said Burney had been "denied entry, and not deported", by the immigration official on duty "on account of inadequate documentation".
The statement added: "The inconvenience to Mr Burney is unfortunate and regrettable, and he is always welcome to visit India. This has also been conveyed to him..."
Burney said the statement was in bad taste.
"My travel documents were not inadequate. I visited India last month on the basis of the same documents," he told HT.
The former minister said he had a SAARC visa sticker on his passport, which he had used to visit India in April. "I was not a minister then, I am not a minister now," he said, adding that the SAARC sticker was not for ministers and parliamentarians alone.
Through the day, as the incident snowballed into an embarrassment for the government, cagey officials sought to argue that the SAARC sticker had caused the "confusion".
31/05/08 Zia Haq/Hindustan Times

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Categories: Airports Jun 2008, Foreign Jun 2008