WASHINGTON, Aug 6: The Clinton administration has expressed its ``regret'' to Pakistani officials over the remarks of a US country prosecutor who, on his part, declined to make amends, ignoring angry demonstrations they had provoked in Islamabad and Karachi.

State Department spokeswoman Stephanie Eicher yesterday said it expressed regret to the Pakistan embassy which had formally objected to the statement of Attorney Robert F Horan, who is prosecuting the capital murder case of Pakistani national Mir Aimal Kansi. ``We regret the television-interview remarks by Horan which were insensitive and offensive to Pakistanis,'' she added. She said the department had asked Horan to discuss the matter with the Pakistan embassy.

However, Horan appeared adamant, saying he would not apologise for his comments relating to the reward of two million dollars which the US offered for the arrest of Kansi who fled to Pakistan after allegedly killing two persons outside the CIA headquarters in Langley, near here, in 1993. In his controversial interview, referring to western Pakistan and southern Afghanistan, the area where Kansi was arrested, Horan had said, ``This is not a high-income area. I am sure the people over there will turn in their mothers for 20,000 dollars let alone two million dollars.'' Horan yesterday explained that his comments were directed at the group that helped protect Kansi while he was hiding in Pakistan and Afghanistan not at the population at large.

He said he intended to write a letter of explanation to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif insisting ``you don't apologise for what you didn't do. I am a prosecutor not a diplomat.'' According to a report from Lahore, Sharif called Horan's statement, which appeared on the front page of most newspapers in Pakistan, ``shocking and shameful.''

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.