The Hindu : 'It cannot be business as usual with Malaysia'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 12, 2003

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'It cannot be business as usual with Malaysia'

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

NEW DELHI MARCH 11 . It cannot be "business as usual" with Malaysia after the roughing up of scores of information technology professionals in Kuala Lumpur, the Foreign Office spokesman said today.

He said that three Indian Ministers holding the Commerce, Textiles and Human Resource Development portfolios would express India's ''shock and displeasure'' at the incident to the visiting Malaysian Entrepreneurial Development Minister, Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz.

For his part, the Commerce Minister, Arun Jaitley, expressed India's "deep anguish" at the treatment meted out to Indian IT professionals to Mr. Abdul Aziz today.

"Shri Jaitley pointed out that not only was the number very large, but practically all of them had valid travel documents. The Minister was specially concerned about the defacing of the documents and the maltreatment to which they were subjected," an official account of the meeting with Mr. Abdul Aziz said.

The Malaysian Minister is said to have informed Mr. Jaitley that the exercise was not directed against Indians per se but part of an ongoing drive against illegal immigrants.

The Foreign Office spokesman also told presspersons that currently four of the 270 persons rounded up on Sunday continued to be in the custody of Malaysian authorities.

He said that the Malaysian High Commissioner to India, Choo Siew Kioh, who was called in to the Ministry of External Affairs on Monday, had not come back with an explanation about why the incident had taken place.

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