ISLAMABAD/PESHAWAR: The chairman of Pakistan’s Senate says the body will not welcome any US delegation, member of Congress or dignitary in Islamabad.
The move comes after the US failed to issue a visa to the Senate’s deputy chairman, a member of the right-wing Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam political party.
Chairman Raza Rabbani says in a statement that no Pakistani Senate delegation will visit the US until an explanation for the delay in issuing a visa to Maulana Ghafoor Haideri is given by US authorities.
A US Embassy spokesman in Islamabad said Sunday they could not comment on visa cases due to privacy laws.
Haideri was to travel Sunday to New York to attend a meeting at the UN.
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman is known for his pro-Taliban and anti-US stances.
Explosion kills two children
Two children were killed and another critically wounded in a grenade explosion in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, officials said.
The children of a shepherd family were playing in a mountainous village in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province when they found the hand grenade and accidentally set it off, local government official Zariful Maani told AFP.
The two brothers aged 9 and 10 died, while their 7-year-old female cousin is in a critical condition, Maani said.
Another local government official, Aizaz Ahmad, confirmed the details.
The village is close to the Swat Valley, where the army sent 30,000 troops in 2009 to battle Taliban fighters led locally by cleric Maulana Fazlullah.
He had taken control of the valley and waged a campaign of violence, including beheadings and attacks on girls’ schools.
Pakistani officials say that Fazlullah fled to neighboring Afghanistan during the offensive.
In 2013 Fazlullah became chief of the wider Pakistan Taliban group.
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