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.