US diplomat banned from leaving Pakistan
ISLAMABAD — Pakistani authorities have barred a US diplomat involved in a fatal traffic accident from leaving the country, forcing a military aircraft flown in for his departure to leave without him, local media reported on Saturday.
The move came a day after Pakistan said it would restrict the movements of all United States diplomats in the country in response to Washington’s similar restrictions on Pakistani embassy staff.
A spokesman for the US embassy in Islamabad declined to comment on either development in the uneasy alliance with Pakistan.
The country is a crucial link to supplying US troops fighting the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. But Washington has long claimed it actually shelters the Taliban’s leaders, and President Donald Trump has cut off military aid in an effort to pressure Pakistan, which vehemently denies the accusation.
The latest blow to relations came on Saturday, when Pakistani authorities banned a US military attache from leaving as planned, Pakistan’s The Nation and Express Tribune newspapers reported.
A day earlier, an Islamabad court had ruled his diplomatic immunity may not apply in the April 7 traffic accident in which the US attache’s vehicle hit a motorcycle, killing the 22-year-old driver, both papers reported.
As a result, a US Air Force C-130 flown in to Pakistan’s Nur Khan air base outside Islamabad was forced to leave without him on Friday, Geo TV and the two newspapers reported.
Separately, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said it would apply travel restrictions to all US diplomatic staff similar to those applied by Washington, according to a notification sent to the US embassy.
The new US rules require diplomats to obtain permission to travel more than 40 kilometers from their stations, the Dawn newspaper reported.
A spokeswoman for the US State Department on Saturday confirmed the new restrictions on its employees in Pakistan but declined to comment further.
US-Pakistani relations have deteriorated significantly since the beginning of the year, when Trump abruptly announced in a tweet a cutoff of military aid to Pakistan, which he said had treated the US with “nothing but lies and deceit” for 15 years.