Pakistan expels Indian diplomat in tit-for-tat move

By Aamir Latif

KARACHI, Pakistan (AA) - Pakistan and India expelled each other's diplomats Thursday in yet another sign of increasingly poor relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors amid a fresh wave of border clashes.

New Delhi declared a Pakistani High Commission official, Mehmood Akhtar, persona non grata and asked him to leave the country within the next 48 hours, Hindustan Times reported.

Akhtar, who was arrested for three hours and released at the intervention of Pakistani High Commission, had been accused of espionage.

In a tit-for-tat response, Pakistan declared an Indian High Commission official, Surjeet Singh, persona non grata and asked him to leave the country along with his family by Saturday, Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Pakistani foreign secretary had summoned the Indian High Commissioner to the Foreign Office and informed him about Surjeet Singh’s activities, which went “against the Vienna Convention and established diplomatic norms,” according to the statement.

The already icy relations between the two nuclear-armed rivals further strained after a brazen attack on an Indian army base in the Indian-held Kashmir valley, which left 18 Indian soldiers dead late last month. New Delhi blamed the attack on militants based in Pakistan.

Pakistan, however, denied the charge. The attack subsequently led to ongoing wave of clashes between the two border forces, which have killed over a dozen people from both sides.

The South Asian countries, which are locked in a string of land-and-sea disputes, have fought three full-fledged wars – two of them on Kashmir – following an end to British colonial rule in the subcontinent in 1947.