Pakistan to grant visas to US officials in 24 hours

Under mounting pressure from the US, Islamabad has decided to drastically prune procedures to grant visas to American defence officials. The process, which used to take close to four months earlier, will take just 24 hours now. The Pakistani embassy in Washington has lifted all scrutiny mechanisms for granting visas for US officials.

This comes in the wake of the US’ intention to take direct control of counter-terror operations in Pakistan as a part of its broader Afghan war strategy.

Previously, acting under pressure from the mighty Pakistani military, the government was passing on all applications for visas by US defence officials to the ministry of defence, which in turn used to send them to the directorate of military intelligence. The visas were granted after several months.

According to media reports here, the new procedures were laid down on the direct intervention of the office of president Asif Ali Zardari to facilitate the Americans in their quest to directly hunt down militant networks in Pakistani cities, where Washington believes major attacks in Europe are being planned and also from where the insurgency in Afghanistan is being directed.

The development on visas occurred slightly before this weekend’s Lisbon summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), where it emerged there was no clear end-game strategy for the mission in Afghanistan.

The Nato leaders pledged to begin the process of withdrawal and handing over of authority for security to Afghan security forces from 2011, and to transfer complete control by the end of 2014, though they clarified that the date given for shifting authority to the Afghan government was not a deadline.