Islamabad, Jan 06: Pakistan on Monday bristled at Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh's charge that its official agencies
were involved in the Mumbai terror attack saying that such an
approach was "fraught with grave risks" even as it dismissed
some details of the evidence provided by India as "not
credible".
Islamabad took just about 24 hours to rubbish the Indian
evidence which included the confessional statement of the lone
surviving terrorist Ajmal Kasab, satellite excerpts of the
conversations between the terrorists in Mumbai and their
handlers in Pakistan and other material handed over to it
yesterday in both Islamabad and New Delhi. Simulataneously, it
upped the war rhetoric by accusing India of pushing the region
towards war.
Additionally, Pakistan took umbrage at Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh's statement at a conference of Chief Ministers
in New Delhi when he accused Islamabad of utilising terror as
an instrument of state policy.
Appearing before the Foreign Relations Committee of the
National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, Minister of
State for Foreign Affairs Malik Amad Khan and Foreign
Secretary Salman Bashir questioned the credibility of the
evidence on the Mumbai attacks provided by India yesterday.
They claimed that India had not given any "credible
evidence" about the Mumbai incident. Pakistan wants credible
information in accordance with the law, they said.
In his speech in the Chief Ministers Conference, Singh
said the world community must be convinced to isolate and
compel countries that uses terrorism as an instrument of
foreign policy to abandon such tactics.
Singh said the Mumbai attacks were carried out by
Pakistan based terror outfit, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and there
was evidence to show that given the sophistication and
military precision, it must have had the support of some
official agencies in Pakistan.
At the Committee hearing, Bashir said the dossier
submitted by India had some details that were "not credible".
The remarks of Khan and Bashir came shortly after
Presidential spokesman Farahtullah Babar described as
"premature" reports in the local media which said the
information handed over by India was insufficient and could
not serve as the basis for action by Pakistan.
In an apparent reference to India's demand for
Pakistan to hand over terror suspects linked to the Mumbai
attacks, Bashir said there was no extradition treaty between
the two countries.
Referring to Singh's comments that the Mumbai incident
had the support of Pakistan's official agencies, Bashir said
the remarks had made the regional situation "more tense".
Bashir accused India of pushing the region towards
war. If India takes any military action against Pakistan, it
would be its "biggest mistake", he said.
The two also charged India with being responsible for
escalating tensions on the basis of the Mumbai attacks.
Accusing India of making efforts to isolate Pakistan
in the international community, Khan said Pakistan has
countered this by "forcefully" presenting its position before
the world.
He said it was unfortunate that India was pointing a
finger at Pakistan's official agencies after initially blaming
non-state actors for the Mumbai incident.
Pak asks India to stop 'blame game'
India and Pakistan should
cooperate in fighting the common threat of terrorism instead
of engaging in any sort of blame game over the Mumbai terror
attacks, Information Minister Sherry Rehman said today.
"We need to grow out of the blame game. Scoring points
will only move us further away from focusing on the very real
and present danger of regional and global terrorism," she said
on the sidelines of a function to mark the birth anniversary
of Pakistan People's Party founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Rehman claimed India's leadership had made contradictory
statements on the involvement of Pakistani agencies in the
Mumbai attacks.
"It is our firm resolve to ensure that non-state actors
do not use Pakistani soil to launch terrorist attacks anywhere
in the world," she said, adding the country has initiated its
own investigations into the Mumbai incident.
Rehman also said Pakistan did not "want war but if war is
imposed on us, we will respond to defend our motherland".
The PPP-led government is following the ideology of slain
former premier Benazir Bhutto, who always wanted regional
cooperation and a better life for the people, he said.
Bureau Report
First Published: Tuesday, January 06, 2009, 00:00