The Foreign Office said on Monday that it had not received any official communication on President Pervez Musharraf's suggestion that sensitive points on Pak-Afghan border could be fenced to prevent undesirable crossings.
The Foreign Office spokesman said that Pakistan government was aware of the fact that there are tribes that live on both sides of the border and many of those have blood relations.
Yet, he said, Pakistan stood by its offer to fence the border to stop militants, or terrorists, travelling across the border to create trouble.
F O spokesman Muhammad Naeem Khan said that agreement, in principle, on opening Lahore-Amritsar and Nankana Saheb-Amritsar bus routes had already been arrived at, and would be given formal shape when technical experts meet in New Delhi on Tuesday and Wednesday.
He rejected a report published by a local eveninger that Islamabad had already selected its 'first Ambassador' to Israel and was preparing to open its embassy there. "Pakistan government has taken no such decision," he emphasised.
Naeem said that Islamabad had been in touch with IAEA on the question of Iranian nuclear development programme and had opposed its reference to UN Security Council.
He said that no movement had taken place on the release of eight Pakistani workers arrested in Iraq for illegal entry. A Kuwaiti contractor had deployed them on a project in Iraq and Pakistan was in touch with the contractor and Iraqi diplomats, he added.
He said that Foreign Secretary Riaz Muhammad Khan would be meeting his British counterpart here on Tuesday to review a number of questions that were discussed between President Musharraf and Prime Minister Tony Blair in London. The details of a treaty on exchange of wanted persons between Pakistan and the UK, he said, were still under discussion.
The spokesman declined to comment on a statement attributed by the Indian press to Abdul Qayyum Khan of Azad Kashmir that he had dubbed the current struggle for liberation in the Valley as 'terrorism'. He said the question should better be addressed to Qayyum.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Kashmiri leader denied the report, saying that there was "no question" that Qayyum could make "such a silly statement".
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