US suspends all high-level dialogue with Pak

Washington: The United States of America has suspended all high-level dialogue with Pakistan after an American diplomat was arrested for killing two Pakistanis in Lahore. Obama administration has suspended all high-level dialogue with Pakistan and is demanding the release of arrested American diplomat Raymond Allen Davis according to a report in The Washington Post.
Davis was arrested on January 27 for killing two Pakistanis he claims had threatened him.
The meeting between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Munich was cancelled last week. 'The Washington Post' says the spat also threatens the Washington summit of US, Afghan and Pakistani leaders on February 24 Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani was summoned to the White House twice over the issue.
Even US Ambassador in Islamabad Cameron Hunter held a meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on the issue.
The State Department has maintained that Davis holds a diplomatic passport and is a member of "technical and administrative staff" at the US Embassy in Islamabad "entitled to full criminal immunity in accordance with the Vienna Convection".
The US Congress has said that the Pakistan government should resolve the issue at the earliest or it could impact other bilateral initiatives including an American aid which is bankrolling cash-starved Pakistan.
Davis was arrested in Lahore in January and produced before a court which has extended his detention for another eight days. The US embassy said it was given no notice of the hearing and that David had no attorney present and he was not even provided with an interpreter.
"He was denied due process and a fair hearing," a State Department statement said, claiming "his continued detention is a gross violation of the international law."
Quoting Pakistani officials, the Post said Islamabad was divided over the case while the Foreign Ministry was pushing Davis' diplomatic immunity, other parts of the government, which were not named, were using the issue to prove independence from Washington.
A new twist had been given to the case, the Post said, by a Pakistani intelligence official claiming that the two men Davis killed were not, as he had said, armed robbers intent on stealing money but were intelligence agents assigned to trail him.
The official said the agents intended to frighten Davis because he crossed a "red line" that the official did not further define. The Post said ISI and the interior ministry's intelligence bureau use motorcycle trails to track the moment of US officials.
The Pakistani media has also suggested that Davis is being held hostage to a wrongful death case brought in New York court by family members of four Americans killed in the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai.
The court has issued summons to ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha and four other ISI officers in the case.
The US and Indian officials have blamed the 2008 attack on Pakistani organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba which has longstanding ties to ISI. State Department spokesman PJ Crowley told reporters that Hillary raised this issue of "illegal detention" of Davis by Pakistan during a telephonic conversation with President Asif Ali Zardari last week and also when she met Army Chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayanai in Munich over the weekend.
"We continue to express to them the importance of resolving this. We continue to express to them the fact that our US diplomat has diplomatic immunity and should be released," Crowley said, adding that by not releasing its diplomat Pakistan is violating the Vienna Convention.
The relations between the two countries have been strained over other issues also which include drone attacks by US forces on targets inside Pakistan, burning of NATO trucks at Pakistan-Afghanistan border and growing by Pakistan over CIA operatives.