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No Indian PoWs in our jails, Pak parrots an expected reply

Pakistan has said there are no Indian Prisoners of War in its jails but Islamabad is ready to look again if New Delhi provided clues about their presence.

During the Agra summit, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had raised the issue with President Pervez Musharraf of the presence of 54 Indian PoWs still languishing in Pakistani jails and demanded their immediate release and return to India. Musharraf had promised to look into the matter.

"We don't have any such prisoners in our jails," Pakistan Interior Secretary Tasneem Noorani told a newspaper.

"A total of 135 Indian nationals were found detained in different Pakistani jails and not one of them was a PoW. Also, over 70 of them were waiting for the Indian government's arrangements to take them back," Noorani told The News.

"We are prepared to undertake a similar exercise again. If they (India or the relatives of the missing soldiers) have any clue then they should pass it on to us," he said.

The interior secretary supported Musharraf's view that there was no reason to keep Indian PoWs for 30 years.

Some PoWs might be useful for the enemy country. But what could Pakistan gain from Indian PoWs after 30 long years, he said.

Indo-Pak Summit 2001: The Complete Coverage

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