SUKKUR, July 15: Condemning Friday’s suicide bombing in Karachi, the deputy high commissioner of the UK, Mr Hamish Daniel, has said that such incidents had also taken place in London last year in which several innocent people were killed.

He said that it was a principled stand of the British government to condemn terrorism in whatever form it existed and urged for concerted efforts to stop such incidents.

The British diplomat was replying to questions of newsmen after visiting the Sukkur barrage on Friday.

He said that terrorism might discourage foreign investment in Pakistan.

Comparing the import and export trade between UK and Pakistan, he said that the balance of trade was in favour of later as it had exported goods worth one billion dollars to UK in the last year while UK had exported goods a little less than one billion dollars in the same period.

He said that over 100 British companies had made billions of dollars investment in Pakistan and a majority of the companies were working in Sindh.

He said that he was quite impressed to visit the Sukkur barrage which was conceived by British engineer C.A. Fife in 1868 and completed in January 1932 for irrigating over 10 million acre land in Sindh.

He said that UK was actively collaborating with Pakistan in different fields, including education, and had issued 8,000 education visas to students in 2005.

The UK high commission in Pakistan had issued more than 200,000 education visas during the last two decades, he said.

The deputy high commissioner said that UK was supporting Pakistan’s efforts for encouraging O and A level education to its students because it would automatically open new avenues for them at the international level.

In this regard he described the role of the British Council Karachi as very effective and promised to expand its sphere of activities to Sukkur which was the third biggest town of Sindh.