"It is extremely unfortunate that Pakistan has chosen to act in this way," Spokesman of the External Affairs Ministry Navtej Sarna said.

"This is a pure and simple act of retaliation and another indication of Pakistan's compulsive hostility towards India," Sarna told the press here.

Reports reaching here said that Pakistan expelled Sudhir Vyas and four others in retaliation to India's announcement earlier on Saturday of expelling Pakistan Charge d'Affaires Jalil Abbas Jilani and four staffers of Pakistan High Commission allegedly for "funding separatist activities" in Kashmir.

"It is unfortunate that this is the only way that they (Pakistan) can act instead of acknowledging the clearly unacceptable behavior of their own Charge d'Affaires acting in broad breach of all diplomatic norms," Sarna said.

Jilani and for others, Habib-ur Rahman, Aftab Ahmed, Abdul Razzak and Mohammad Zazir, had been asked to leave the country within 48 hours while their families had been given a week's time to leave India, Sarna told the media on Saturday morning.

Sarna said that New Delhi had hard evidence of what Jilani was doing, which was incompatible with the diplomatic norms.

India called back its High Commissioner in Islamabad Vijay K. Nambiar following the attack on Indian parliament in December, 2001, and, few months later, India asked Pakistan to recall its High Commissioner to India, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.

India's decision followed the arrest on Thursday night of two activists of the Hurriyat Conference, a Muslim organization in Kashmir, Anjum Zamrooda Habib and Shabir Dar, after they came out of the Pakistan embassy here.

Delhi police claimed that they recovered 500,000 rupees (some US$10,500) from them, which meant for separatists in Kashmir, shortly after they came out of the embassy.

According to the police, Anjum Zamrooda Habib confessed before a special judge on Friday that she was handed over 300,000 rupees (US$6,300) in the Pakistan mission as gift for Harriyat Chairman Abdul Ghani Bhat.

(Xinhua News Agency February 9, 2003)