REPORTING ON THE "ENEMY"

personal interaction! To the best of my knowledge Foreign Minister, Jaswant Singh has not given a single interview to a Pakistani reporter.

Officials here at various levels in fact go out of their way to help in obtaining all the information routed through the `proper channels`. You are informed of all the important briefings. On demand they promptly fax copies of the statements you want. I have not come across a single instance of an official being rude or deliberately sitting on information.

On the other hand, there is hardly any help from the Indian High Commission. The Commission officials won`t say a word, even off the course, without clearance from New Delhi. There are instances of New Delhi releasing incidents of harassment of the mission staff in Islamabad despite presence of two Indian correspondents in Islamabad.

As for what we write, yes there is monitoring. I suppose it is usual for every country to keep tabs on what foreign correspondents write. It must be said to the credit of the Musharraf government that it has not put any restrictions on what they write. Only twice I got a polite call from the External Publicity Division. Once it was an objection to the headline of a report and the second time a request to substantiate my comment with `fact`.