Islamabad, Pakistan - Islamabad protested to the European Union, Belgium and the Netherlands on Thursday after the European parliament cancelled talks with a delegation of Pakistani lawmakers because one was a pro-Taliban cleric.
The three Islamabad-based European ambassadors were summoned to the Foreign Office to receive a strong protest, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
"This is an act of discrimination," junior foreign affairs minister Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar told Pakistan's parliament shortly before it passed a resolution denouncing the incident as inappropriate.
An eight-member delegation from the Senate, parliament's upper house, arrived in Brussels on Tuesday for talks on disputed Kashmir and other issues with the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, Pakistani media reported.
But security staff at Brussels airport stopped the cleric, senator Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, saying he needed clearance from the Belgian Interior Ministry to enter the country, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
Haq is a senior leader of an alliance of Islamic parties -- a strong force in Pakistan's national parliament and two conservative states neighbouring Afghanistan that opposed the U.S.-led war that toppled the former Taliban rulers in Kabul in 2001.
Other members of the delegation were not stopped and Haq was allowed to join them after a 90-minute delay.
Pakistani embassy officials informed the delegation on Wednesday the European parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee was only willing to meet the delegation if Haq was not included but the senators refused.
Haq is well-known for his pro-Taliban views and runs the Darul Uloom-e-Haqqania, a major Islamic religious school, or madrassah, in Pakistan where several prominent Taliban members studied.
The ambassador of the Netherlands was summoned to receive the protest over the affair because that country represents in Pakistan the interests of Luxembourg, the current president of the EU.