Pakistan offers to help screen U.K. visa applicants

[Coventina]

Source: CNN

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Britain should refer suspicious student visa applications to Pakistan as a way to help prevent terrorism, the country's high commissioner to Britain said Friday.

Wajid Hasan's suggestion came the same week that 12 people were arrested in Britain with suspected links to al Qaeda. Eleven of those arrested were Pakistani nationals, some of whom were in Britain on student visas, officials told CNN.

"If they (the British authorities) had referred these cases to us, we would have made inquiries, and then told them whether to issue them visas or not," Hasan told CNN from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

"That's why I suggested, I've been suggesting, that in case there are doubts, they should always be referred to our home ministry ... so that we could also be made responsible for it."



Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/04/10/uk.pakistan.arrests/