The writer has not given any suggestion as to how the Foreign Office or government should handle the situation.
ISLAMABAD: The writer, in his article, has not given any worthwhile suggestion as to how the Foreign Office mandarins, or government leadership, should handle the situation. Could the following incident be quoted as a precedent for handling this within the ambit of international diplomatic laws?
In the 1997 case, Gueorgui Makharadze, the Georgian ambassador in Washington, had killed an American teenager in a road accident. The then US president, Bill Clinton, had flatly refused to grant diplomatic immunity to the Georgian diplomat. The US exerted extreme pressure on the Georgian government to lift his diplomatic immunity, even though it was not a deliberate shoot-to-death killing, as in the case of Raymond Davis. The Georgian government finally relented and Makharadze was tried in a US court, found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 21 years in prison. While lifting Makharadze’s diplomatic immunity, then Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze observed, “I cannot imagine diplomacy and politics devoid of moral principle.”
Shoaib Sarwar
Published in The Express Tribune, February 12th, 2011.
