Islamabad, Sept 19: Pakistan has denied visas to a 40-member delegation of Indian theatre artistes, close on the heels of a group of top Indian jurists meeting with the same fate. The artistes were invited to take part in next month's world performing arts festival in Lahore. According to sources, repeated attempts by the event organisers Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop (RPTW), who have written to Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi to permit the group to visit Lahore, have not yielded any results.

Early this month a high level delegation of serving and retired judges from India, which was invited to visit Pakistan by its Supreme Court Bar Association, (SAB) were denied visas, much to the embarrassment of the Pakistan legal community. SAB officials allege that the visas were denied to Indian judicial officials in view of its own agitation against the judges and the government.
Pakistani media quoted the registrar of the Supreme Court as saying that the Chief Justice of Pakistan wanted to invited the Indian jurists himself to visit Pakistan at a later date.

SAB was in direct conflict with the judges of the Pakistan Supreme Court and high courts over the credibility of judiciary and is currently agitated against President Pervez Musharraf's decision to extend the service of superannuated judges by three years.

The SAB along with regional bar associations also fiercely opposed Musharraf's Legal Framework Order (LFO), which incorporated his controversial amendments to the Constitution empowering him to dissolve Parliament. Bureau Report