France Moves Consulate Into Compound
07/24/2002 04:51:57 EST
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - With extremists threatening more attacks on Westerners
in Pakistan, France is moving its consular offices in Karachi into the more heavily
guarded British consulate, an official said Wednesday.
France will vacate its consulate building, which is difficult to protect because of its
location near a busy residential road, said consulate spokesman Ata Ansari.
French diplomats and local staff will set up offices in a building in the much larger
British consulate, which is on a road sealed off by concrete barriers and guarded by
heavily armed Pakistani police and paramilitary troops.
French soldiers who had been guarding their own consulate will be sent home, and the
French will rely on the existing British-arranged security, Ansari said. He said other
staffing levels will be unaffected by the move.
Ansari said the relocation is already under way.
The move follows warnings by a former Taliban commander that Islamic militants led
by al-Qaida want to launch further strikes quickly against American interests in
Pakistan.
"There will be another big attack in Pakistan, and it will happen soon," Fazul Rabi
Said-Rahman, once the top Taliban commander in eastern Afghanistan, told The
Associated Press last week.
The French consulate in Karachi shut down its visa section following a May 8 suicide
bombing outside the Sheraton Hotel that killed 11 French engineers and three other
people. Visa offices are vulnerable to attacks because they offer public access to visa
applicants.
Karachi, a sprawling city of 14 million people, has seen a rise in extremist violence
and anti-Western feelings following last year's start of U.S. military operations in
neighboring Afghanistan.
On June 14, 12 people were killed and some 50 injured in a car-bombing outside the
U.S. consulate in Karachi. |
