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Pakistan warned the Bush administration on Wednesday that any mass deportation of illegal Pakistani immigrants under new US security requirements would have a severe impact on relations.
All males over 16 from Pakistan and 24 other countries have to register with the US authorities under a system designed to keep track of foreigners, imposed after the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
Some Pakistanis whose papers are not in order have crossed the border to Canada for fear of deportation to Pakistan if and when the authorities catch up with them, media reports say.
"What we are afraid of is mass deportation of Pakistanis under any provision or pretext whatsoever," Pakistani Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri told a news conference after talks with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"That will be devastating and it will place undue pressures on our relationship," the minister added.
The minister said he had asked Washington to exempt Pakistanis from the provision. Powell said only that the United States would make sure it was implemented "in a dignified way".
Pakistan worked closely with the Bush administration against the Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda members who used Pakistan as a transit route.
But the registration requirement has angered many Pakistanis by giving the impression that the United States does not really trust them.
Powell said he recognized that the requirement had caused concern among Pakistanis and Pakistani Americans but defended the program as a way to defend the United States.
"I assured the minister that we are very sensitive to those concerns. He gave me a number of ideas as to how some of these concerns can be dealt with," he said.
"But I also reinforced that this
is not something directed at Pakistan or directed at Muslims or directed
at Pakistanis in America. It is an effort on the part of the United States
to do a better job of knowing who is in our country. The minister has my
full assurance that we will be doing everything to implement this program
in a dignified manner," he added.
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