Pakistan 'shifting blame'

2008-12-22 20:05

New Delhi/Islamabad - India accused Pakistan on Monday of trying to shift blame for last month's Mumbai attacks and demanded it do more to dismantle militant networks as a top US commander arrived in Islamabad.

India and the United States have blamed Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for the attacks, which has provoked a sharp rise in rhetoric between the nuclear-armed neighbours who have fought three wars since 1947.

Pakistan denies any links to the assault on India's financial heart, which killed 179 people, blaming "non-state actors", and has promised to co-operate in investigations. However, Pakistan says India has provided no evidence for it to investigate.

"Pakistan's response so far has demonstrated their earlier tendency to resort to a policy of denial and to seek to deflect and shift the blame and responsibility," India Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said.

Mukherjee reiterated that India was keeping all its options open after the Mumbai attacks, comments the Indian media have widely interpreted to mean that a military response was still possible. Mukherjee said that was not his intent.

On Sunday, Mukherjee said India had given Pakistan specific evidence about who was behind the attack, including intercepted satellite telephone conversations and an account given by the lone surviving gunman, Ajmal Amir Kasab.

"We have highlighted that the infrastructure of terrorism in Pakistan has to be dismantled permanently," Mukherjee told a meeting of Indian envoys from 120 countries on Monday.

A Pakistani spokesperson said India had provided no evidence and the only information it was getting was through the media.

"We are doing our own investigation but it can go only so far because we do not have anything from the scene of the crime, we do not have anything from India," said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mohammad Sadiq.

The Pakistani air force had "enhanced its vigilence" in view of the situation, a spokesperson said.

Some Indian analysts said they feared the stridency of the Indian reaction might be painting Pakistan into a corner.

"We should have given Pakistan more time and by making the kind of remarks we have made, we have taken away any other option. We have spoken too soon and too loosely," New Delhi political commentator Prem Shankar Jha told Reuters.

The chairperson of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, arrived in Pakistan for his second visit since the attacks for talks on "regional issues", a US embassy spokesperson said.

Early this month, Mullen urged Pakistan to investigate all links to Mumbai and to broaden its campaign against militants.

In New Delhi, US Ambassador David Mulford met Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, state television said.

UN sanctions

Sadiq said Pakistan was doing everything possible: "We have done more than what is required by the UN Security Council."

A UN Security Council committee this month added four Lashkar leaders to a list of people and groups facing sanctions for ties to al Qaeda or the Taliban.

LeT was set up to fight Indian rule in Kashmir and has been linked by US officials and analysts to Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence military spy agency, who they say use it as a tool to destabilise India.

The UN sanctions also covered what the committee said was a new alias for Lashkar-e-Taiba - the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). Lashkar was banned in Pakistan in 2002.

Pakistan has detained scores of militants and shut offices and frozen the assets of the JuD, which says it is an Islamic charity with no connection to Lashkar since it was accused of involvement in an attack on India's parliament in late 2001.

Pakistan has also detained two of the militants mentioned in the UN resolution and imposed travel bans on them. There has been no word on the fate of the other two, one of them a Saudi.

In response to the attack, India has imposed a "pause" on a nearly five-year old peace process that had brought better ties and cancelled a cricket tour of Pakistan planned for next month.

Kasab, identified in Indian media as the surviving gunman, told investigators he came from the village of Faridkot in Pakistan's Punjab province. Pakistan's Sadiq said he had no details of the investigation but he assumed reports of the link to Faridkot were being checked.

- Reuters