Police conducts raid at N Korean embassy in Pak; Interior minister apologises

Islamabad: The police in Pakistan’s national capital conducted a raid at the North Korean embassy earlier this week over inputs about the presence of a large amount of liquor in its premises, prompting the diplomatic mission to lodge a strong protest over what it called the violation of the Vienna Convention.

Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid on Thursday apologised for the raid on the diplomatic mission, terming the incident as a “misunderstanding”. His remarks came hours after reports surfaced that the North Korean embassy wrote a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying the Islamabad Police violated the Vienna Convention.

A report published in The News daily said that the embassy had stated in a letter to the Foreign Office and Islamabad’s police chief that police entered the mission’s premises from the backdoor at approximately 5 pm (local time) on March 7 and harassed its workers.

The paper reported that the embassy in the letter said that the staff reminded the police that the embassy was exercising the inviolable sovereign territory of North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and asked them to immediately stop this brutality, the letter read.

However, the letter claimed that the policemen searched the storeroom in the backyard on the pretense of looking for something and threatened the mission staff with guns who tried to stop them. The letter also stated that the policemen damaged the embassy’s property. —PTI