ISLAMABAD: The government of Pakistan reiterated on Friday that Israeli citizens could not get visas to Pakistan, a follow up on Israel recently being ‘mistakenly’ listed on an official website among countries whose citizens could travel to Pakistan.
In a statement released by Pakistan’s Press Information Department (PID) on Friday, a government spokesperson said “Pakistan does not have diplomatic relations with Israel and consequently the provision of visa [to its citizens] does not arise.”
Last week while talking to Arab News, a high ranking official of the Federal Investigations Agency (FIA) said Pakistan’s Immigration and Passports office had recently “mistakenly” listed ‘Israel’ among the countries whose citizens needed to go through special checks in order to visit Pakistan but that the error was being corrected.
The appearance of the list on the website created a hype because there are no diplomatic ties between the two countries.
But despite the government statement and clarifications, the list is still available on the FIA website, and shows Israel as one of seven countries whose citizens would need to undergo special police registration if they visited Pakistan.
The other countries are India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nigeria, Somalia and Palestine.
“A Government spokesperson has denied a misleading news item carried by a section of press regarding provision of visa facility to Israeli citizens on arrival at Pakistani airports,” the PID statement said.