Islamabad: In a significant development, Pakistan has warned of devastating consequences for Pak-US relations in the event of Washington deciding to resort to mass deportation of Pakistanis residing illegally in the US.

"Such eventuality (large-scale deportation of Pakistanis) if did occur would have devastating consequences for Pak-US relations," Pakistan Foreign Minister Mehmood Ahmed Kasuri has said.

Kasuri, however hoped that US would not take such a decision.

"The fear in Pakistan is that the law would result in large scale deportation of Pakistanis. as a result of my conversation with various leaders both in the Congress as well as in the administration, I think there will not be deportation of large number of Pakistanis," he told BBC radio in an interview.

Kasuri was in US for 10 days and would remain there till February 5 to attend the UN Security Council meet on Iraq.

Referring to his meetings with US officials on the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) issue, which evoked sharp response at home Kasuri said, "The administration has told me that Pakistan is not being discriminated. And I do hope as a result of my visit, the fear we had initially that there would be a large number of deportation of Pakistanis, is probably not going to happen."

According to official estimates over a lakh Pakistanis resided in US without proper immigration status. Already several have begun returning for fear of detention and deportation. The government also fears steep fall in foreign remittances if US decides to resort to large-scale deportation.

PTI