Spat as Pakistanis quizzed in UK probe

LONDON - The scandalous exploitation of Britains lax student visas rules by a suspected Al-Qaeda cell erupted into a huge diplomatic row on Friday between Gordon Brown and Pakistan.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared that Pakistan has to do more to root out terrorist elements in its country in the wake of the revelation that 11 of the 12 suspects had travelled to Britain from the country. But at least 10 of the 12 were allowed to enter by the British Home Office after successfully applying for student visas.
As security forces in Britain carried out a desperate search for the terrorist bomb factory, Pakistans High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Wajid Shamsul Hasan said it was the UK that was guilty of not doing enough to carry out security checks on foreign students.
He said Pakistani authorities could help carry out background checks on student visa applicants but were not allowed to, adding it is at your end you have to do something more. Every day we are raiding people, we are arresting people, we are arresting suspects wherever we find them.
The British Government figures showed 42,292 student visas were issued to Pakistani students between April 2004 and April 2008. At the same time, it appears a supposed 2007 crackdown on bogus colleges - which charge foreign students thousands of pounds for fake academic courses - failed to detect the suspects seized this week in the North-West of England. Only one is understood to have been studying at a reputable institution. Officials also believe they lied about their financial resources to evade a British Home Office test of their ability to pay for their studies.
Britains Immigration Minister Phil Woolas on Friday insisted that foreign national students were checked against watchlists of criminals and suspects from other countries. Its naive to think that we dont check, we do work very closely with the Pakistan authorities, indeed weve been criticised for doing so, he said - only a week after he said student visas were the major loophole in Britains border controls.
He told BBC Radio 4s PM programme on Friday that there were 285 million people coming in and out of the country every year, including nearly 400,000 issued with student visas. We do have these systems of checking these people to the best of our ability and we are acknowledged in international police circles as being one of the best in the world, he went on.
Woolas further said he had no detail of the arrests from this week but the fact of the matter was that the individuals had been identified.
Sultan Sher, Abid Naseer, Hamza Shenwari and Abdul Khan and six others were arrested in the 14 police raids in Manchester and Liverpool cities of England. Ten out of twelve detainees allegedly belong to the tribal areas of Pakistan.
With the Pakistanis all believed to originate from poor tribal regions, there are suspicions that funds may have been provided directly by Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Far from studying, at least four of the men had been working as security guards. One had told neighbours he was attending a college which has actually closed.
Investigations are said to be going on in Pakistan where officials said on Thursday they had given British authorities the names of 36 of their citizens suspected of having trained in camps and now being in the UK. The suspects are believed to have been trained in South Waziristan by the Jaish-e-Muhammad. The group was linked to Rashid Rauf, believed to have been killed in a US missile strike. The revelation that the suspected terror cell was imported into Britain by an apparently legal route is a huge embarrassment for ministers. Any migrant wanting a visa is supposed to undergo rigorous checks. They are also checked against terror watchlists. But there have been a series of warnings, dating back to at least 2005, that checks are not sufficiently robust.
AFP adds: Ambassador Wajid insisted that Islamabad was doing all it could to fight terrorists, while Britain needed to do more to tighten up its borders and help Pakistan stop terrorism spreading.
We are accused of not doing enough. We are doing enough, despite our limited resources, he told Sky News television from Islamabad.
We will continue to do whatever is possible, within our means, to fight them (terrorists). We are at the fag end of our resources... What else can we do?
We have been telling our Western friends to provide us assistance, equipment and training... so that can put our act together and carry on with the war.
He earlier told BBC television that there were problems with Britains student visa system.
If they allow us to make inquiries first, if they ask us to scrutinise those who are seeking visas, we can help them.
A Home Office spokesman said everyone applying to study in Britain was checked out. Every student wishing to study in the UK undergoes scrutiny - including fingerprint checks against a range of immigration, terrorism and crime watch lists, he said.
Well do everything in our power to bar those who are up to no good.
British police searched houses and properties and questioned 11 Pakistanis in a probe into an alleged planned Al-Qaeda attack, as London and Islamabad traded accusations over fighting terrorism.
Police searched 10 properties across northwest England, where officers had carried out hastily arranged raids in broad daylight Wednesday after Britains top anti-terror officer inadvertently revealed details of the operation.
According to British media reports, the row between Britain and Pakistan over student visas escalated on Friday when the British Immigration Minister rejected Pakistans claim that security checks on foreign students in the UK were not robust. Immigration Minister Phil Woolas insisted that foreign students were checked against watch lists of criminals and suspects from other countries.
According to a media report, he reacted after Pakistani High Commissioner to UK said that any problems laid with the British system for student visas.