ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- Pakistani coalition's ruling party, under pressure to release a detained U.S. diplomat, came down hard on its former foreign minister, local media said.
The government of President Asif Ali Zardari dropped Shah Mehmood Qureshi as foreign minister in a Cabinet reshuffle Friday amid the heating issue over the detention of Raymond Davis, a U.S. Consulate official, accused in the Jan. 27 shooting deaths of two Pakistani men in Lahore. The U.S. Embassy has said the shootings were in self-defense.
The Zardari government of Pakistan People's Party, caught between domestic pressures to prosecute Davis and Washington's insistence he be released on diplomatic immunity privileges, did not reappoint Qureshi, who reportedly had questioned Davis's diplomatic status.
"The kind of blanket immunity Washington is pressing for Davis, is not endorsed by the official record of the Foreign Ministry," China's Xinhua reported Qureshi, who did not take the oath with the new Cabinet Friday, told Pakistan's The News.
On Sunday, PPP information secretary Fauzia Wahab, without referring to the Davis issue, told Dawn newspaper: "Serious disciplinary action will be taken against [Qureshi] for violating the party discipline and humiliating its leadership."
She said Qureshi's three years as foreign minister were questionable and that he had not supported Zardari when the latter was criticized over his foreign trips.
Asked about the Davis issue, she said if Qureshi had any differences he should have resigned earlier.
Sources told Dawn Qureshi had been upset after Zardari reportedly stopped him from making statements on the Davis issue, giving that task instead to the interior minister. Zardari also apparently was not happy Qureshi had skipped meeting with the U.S. congressional delegation last week.
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The Daily Times quoted Pakistani Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar as saying the government has not prepared any summary to release Davis, and that it will not accept any pressure on the case.
These latest developments come as the U.S. State Department, citing "political changes in Pakistan," postponed a meeting this month with Pakistan and Afghanistan to discuss the Afghan war.
