Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi strongly resisted my release from prison: Raymond Davis memoir
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Ex CIA agent Raymond Davis has revealed that the Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was angered by the growing presence of unidentified US officials in their country, pounced on the opportunity to use my predicament to embarrass the United States and further their own agendas.
Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the Cambridge-educated foreign minister who resigned from his post on January 30 after being pressured by the central government to grant me diplomatic immunity.
Buoyed by his legal advisers, Qureshi seized upon the fact that I worked for the consulate and not the embassy, and he wouldn’t let go. He said that after studying the Vienna Conventions of 1961 and 1963, he had concluded that “the blanket immunity as being demanded by the US Embassy was not valid.”
He further writes, “Three days before President Obama was to sign the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act into law, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, flew to Washington to relay the Pakistani military’s concerns.
“Kerry had always enjoyed a close working relationship with Qureshi. He often referred to him as a friend, and he’d even given Qureshi’s son Zain an internship in his Senate office. But when Kerry flew to Pakistan on February 15, 2011, to attempt to broker a deal that might spring me from the Lahore prison where I was being detained on judicial remand, Qureshi didn’t act like much of a friend.
Rather than giving in to the government’s wish that I be granted diplomatic immunity, he’d actually resigned his position three days after the incident at Mozang Chowk, and two weeks later he remained undeterred.
In a meeting of top Pakistani officials, both President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani tried to convince Qureshi to change his hardline stance, but Qureshi let it be known in a press conference the following day that he wasn’t going to budge. “It is time to not bow down before the US and the need of the hour is to live with raised heads,” he said.
