With Shah Mahmood Qureshi, till recently the Foreign Minister, saying that the American national Raymond Davis who murdered two Pakistanis at a crowded place of Lahore last month, is not a diplomat, the plea of the US administration against trying him in a court of law in Pakistan and for handing him over to them falls flat. As a non-diplomat, there is no question of the immunity that the US has been insisting he enjoyed. He must be proceeded against under the law of the land where he has committed the crime. For the record, it needs to be stated that Mr Qureshi has unequivocally affirmed that the information about his being a non-diplomat was given to him in his official capacity by the Foreign Office. Interior Minister Rehman Maliks statement that he is a diplomat hardly, in that case, merits consideration. Though the informed public opinion in Pakistan never had any doubt about his identity, one must take into account another dimension to the case, apart from the issue of whether he is a diplomat or not. It would seem that asking for his release is morally wrong of the US, and, at the same time, handing him over to Washington would demonstrate Pakistans undue weakness, reflecting its unhesitating compliance with the US commands, right or wrong. And those who even have fallen in line with the US viewpoint of his being a diplomat do not view the US demand morally justified. Thus, the entire Pakistani nation wants his trial in the country. Foreign Secretary Salman Bashirs views chimed in with these sentiments when he said if he were in Davis position, he would not have sought immunity. He also broke the weeks-long silence of the Foreign Office on this case and told diplomatic correspondents, the US efforts to pressurise Islamabad would be counterproductive. As it was widely expected, Pakistans continued resistance to the US pressure about Davis case has led Washington to retaliate by putting off the tripartite talks (US-Pakistan-Afghanistan), as an expression of unhappiness with a client state. The US might argue differently, as it has done, that the reshuffle of the cabinet in Pakistan has necessitated this postponement, but the Foreign Secretarys observation, we are all set to attend the conference whenever it takes place, gives away the actual story. Islamabad must not succumb to such pressure tactics and let the process of law take its course. It should be clear that the US desire to leave Afghanistan stems from the realisation that they are up against a formidable enemy, and not for any love of Afghans; nor are they friends of the Muslim world. This reality the general public in Afghanistan and Pakistan understands very well, but it must sink in, at the level of top ruling hierarchies of the two countries. Their leaderships must, working with Iran and Turkey, both neighbouring Muslim countries, come up with a formula for peaceful transition to governance in Afghanistan in the post-US period.