India on Friday alerted airports across the nation to prevent Italian Ambassador Daniele Mancini from leaving the country and simultaneously asked Basant Kumar Gupta its Ambassador-designate to Italy, not to take up his posting.
All the exit points across the country, including airports, have been alerted to prevent Mancini from leaving.
The decision was taken by the Union Home Ministry a day after the Supreme Court restrained the Italian Ambassador from leaving India without its permission.
The court had taken exception to the Italian Government’s refusal to send back the two Marines charged with the killing of two Indian fishermen.
On Thursday, the Government had announced review of the entire gamut of relations with Italy which includes diplomatic, trade and Defence ties and briefed the European Union on India’s views and position in the matter.
An official spokesman in the Ministry of External Affairs said the “entire expanse of our interaction with Italy” was being reviewed, while stressing that Italy has to “respect and abide” by the agreements between it and the Supreme Court.
Accusing Italy of violating diplomatic norms and breaching the assurance given to the Supreme Court of India, top Government sources said it was totally “unacceptable” and India was looking at downgrading its ties with that country to express its unhappiness.
“The decision of not sending Gupta to assume his position tantamounts to the fact that India wants to keep diplomatic ties with Italy at a level lesser than the Ambassador,” sources said.
Gupta was named successor to Debabrata Saha, who retired last December.
The stand-off between India and Italy was also discussed at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that was attended by External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid and National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon a day before the downgrading of diplomatic ties came into effect.
The Marines were charged with killing two fishermen off the Kerala coast in February last year in an anti-piracy operation.
They were permitted by the apex court on February 22 to go to Italy for four weeks to vote and were directed to return within four weeks, which they failed to do.