A US diplomatic cable sent to Washington on December 15, 2009 and recently released by WikiLeaks indicated that frequent visits of US VIP delegations to Pakistan had not only irked top government functionaries including the president, prime minister and chief of army staff but had also caused enormous trouble to the US diplomatic mission in the capital.
Anne W Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan at the time wrote in the cable bearing subject ‘Islamabad VIP Visit Limitation Request’ that the Islamabad embassy and its three consulates could not continue to host visitors at the current level. She said Post supported 89 VIP delegations comprising 646 people, who stayed 160 nights and used 894 FAV vehicle days in 2009. “Already, the Post has notification of ten VIP delegations planned for the first half of January 2010 including three major CoDels (Congressional Delegation) on the same day,” she had said.
“In addition to the housing shortage, Pakistan’s reluctance to provide custom clearance for equipment (including armored vehicles) and visas to incoming US staff is causing critical shortages of both supplies and personnel. Some embassy sections have now fallen to 50 percent manning and we are denying leave or departure from Post as there are no incoming replacements. We cannot accommodate a large numbers of visitors with our greatly reduced staffing,” the cable said. “Pakistan is increasingly raising concerns about the number of high level (president, prime minister, chief of army staff) appointments we have been requesting.