US declares Karachi "not a safe place for Americans to be in"

The fact that public antipathy towards the US runs so high in a country that is patently an ally of Washington seemed hard to understand for many Americans. What made it worse is that this is not even a one-off strike in the city against the US. On previous occasions, the US consulate in the city has been attacked and embassy personnel have been shot at and killed.

In the strongest condemnation yet of Pakistan’s civil war-scarred port city, state department spokesman James Rubin said the administration had made it clear in a series of warnings over several months that Karachi “is not a safe place for Americans to be.” Travel warnings had been issued on June 26th (following Kansi’s arrest), October 1, November 10 and November 12.

“The warnings all have separate and different calibrations of that judgement, but that’s the bottom line,” Rubin said.

Rubin also pointed out that the State department’s 1996 information sheet identified Karachi as an area of instability. The US had scaled back its consulate presence from 50 to 20 following an attack two-and-half-years ago which killed two staffers. The assailants in the case have never been traced.The grisly chronicle of violence is now beginning to take a toll of Pakistan’s already beleaguered economy. The latest attack came at a time when the investment firm Merrill Lynch was sponsoring a seminar in what is touted to be Pakistan’s commercial and financial hub. As it is the Karachi Stock Exchange has been in the doldrums for the last several years because of the internal ethnic strife.

On Wednesday, about two dozen American businessmen who had gone to attend the seminar checked out of luxury hotels. Merrill Lynch also cancelled a similar seminar scheduled for Friday in Lahore. Also in Karachi, the American School, which enrolls expatriate children, was reportedly closed for a second day.

Meantime, in a Virginia courthouse some 20 miles from here, a 12-member all-white jury deliberated for a second day on whether Mir Aimal Kasi should get the death penalty for the killing of two CIA employees. Some reports say jury members have written to the judge expressing concern over their safety. The jury has now been sequestered and their identities will remain a permanent secret. A verdict is expected on Friday.

State department spokesman Jamie Rubin conceded that the administration was worried that the possible sentencing could have an impact on Americans worldwide. However, US officials once again reiterated that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would travel to Pakistan undeterred by the Karachi shootout. Albright is not going to Karachi, but will travel to Peshawar, where she is expected to make a speech in a girls schools and send out a strong message to the Taliban fundamentalists.

In Pakistan, the police have recorded statements of several persons witness to Wednesday’s killing and based on their accounts, sketches of the killers have been made.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who had a telephonic conversation with President Bill Clinton yesterday, met the US ambassador in Islamabad, Thomas Simons Jr, and assured that the government would do its best to track down the killers and award them deterrent punishment. The assurance came as a controversy raged in the country if the trial of the killers when arrested would be held in the country or in the US in the light of deportation of Mir Aimal Kasi.

Media reports said interior minister Choudhury Shujaat Hussain, who heads the special cabinet committee to oversee the investigation, was non-comittal about the trial in Pakistan.