Pakistan Delays Decision on U.S. Murder Suspect
This story was filed by CBS News' Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad.
A Pakistani court on Thursday delayed a hearing to decide whether a U.S. man charged with murdering two locals should be granted diplomatic immunity, triggering fresh tension among officials over the Asian country's ties to the United States.
Raymond Davis, who the American government insists is a diplomat immune to local prosecution and should be immediately repatriated to the U.S., was arrested in Pakistan for last month's murder of two Pakistani nationals in Lahore.
Thursday's decision by a Lahore court to put off hearing the case until March 14 means the Davis case will inevitably drag on, dashing hopes among senior officials in both Islamabad and Washington for a quick resolution.
Davis, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier, was arrested after the January 27 murder of two Pakistanis. Davis has said the two men were trying to rob him and that he acted in self defense.
The Obama administration and the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad have called for Davis to be released on the grounds that he was posted as a diplomat to Pakistan and carried full diplomatic immunity.
On Wednesday, Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met key Pakistani civil and military leaders to reinforce Washington's keen interest in maintaining and further consolidating an alliance with Pakistan -- an essential ally to the U.S. in its drive to stabilize the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Pakistani officials said Kerry's trip was mainly to look at ways of resolving the dispute surrounding Davis' arrest.
"I leave here with confidence that if people act with both conviction and courage and vision, we will be able to move forward, said Kerry before leaving Pakistan on Wednesday.
"I look forward to the next few days hopefully to finding ways that we all agreed on, that we can find in order to resolve this issue that's in front of us," he added, referring to the Davis case. Ahead of the Senator's departure, a senior Pakistani official told CBS News that President Asif Ali Zardari's government had decided to officially grant Davis immunity -- a crucial step to ultimately enable his exit from the country and avoid prosecution in Lahore.
After Thursday's developments at the court in Lahore, a second senior Pakistani government official told CBS News that the court's proceedings were "beyond the control of the government." However, the same official said the government was set to, "declare Davis immune from prosecution, as we want to retain close ties with the US."
Western diplomats in Pakistan familiar with U.S.-Pakistan relations told CBS News on Thursday that even the prospect of the case dragging on in to the coming weeks or months would harm relations between the two countries.
"A long drawn out case, even which gets resolved in the end, will simply create lots of bad atmospherics. This is best to be avoided if Pakistan wants to remain a close ally of the U.S.," one Western diplomat in Islamabad told CBS on condition of anonymity.