India asks Pakistan for terror suspects

2 Dec 2008, 6:40 pm   -   Source: AAP
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India wants Pakistan to hand over a number of terror suspects, including the head of the militant group accused of carrying out attacks on Mumbai, sources say.

India has called on Pakistan to hand over a number of terror suspects, including the head of the militant group accused of carrying out last week's attacks on Mumbai, diplomatic sources say.

The demand was made by India's ambassador to Islamabad, Satyabrata Pal, at a meeting with senior Pakistani diplomats on Monday, the sources said on Tuesday.

The men sought by New Delhi include Hafeez Sayeed, the chief of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant group which has become the focus of investigations into the Mumbai attacks that killed 188 people and injured 313.

The names feature on a list of 20 suspects originally put together by New Delhi after Lashkar-e-Taiba gunmen attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001.

The diplomatic sources said Pal had specifically urged action on three of the men.

As well as Sayeed, he highlighted Maulana Masood Azhar, chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammed rebel group, and Dawood Ibrahim, wanted in India on charges of masterminding serial bombings in Mumbai in 1993 that killed about 300 people.

Ibrahim was designated as a "global terrorist" by the US Treasury Department in 2003.

He is believed to be living in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

Pakistan has repeatedly ruled out sending any of the men on the list to India and has denied Ibrahim even lives in the country.

The latest attacks in Mumbai have been described as a "major setback" for the peace process between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

A Jewish centre was among the targets and eyewitnesses said some attackers singled out Britons and Americans in two luxury hotels. Civilians were also gunned down in a railway station, hospital and a cafe.

"What has happened is a grave setback to the process of normalisation of relations and the confidence-building measures," Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma told AFP.

Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani urged India to provide evidence that Pakistanis were involved and promised to co-operate if proof was provided.

"They have given us some of the organisations ... but that is not evidence. If they will give us evidence we are committed that we will extend full co-operation," Gilani said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday.

"Let the proof come, then we will give our point of view."

New Delhi has stopped short of blaming the Pakistani government for the carnage, but intelligence officials blame Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.

Gilani denied there were differences between his government and Pakistan's powerful military after plans to send the head of the ISI military intelligence agency to India to help investigate the Mumbai attacks were reversed.

And he also played down reports that Pakistan could move troops away from the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the country's northern tribal areas to reinforce security on its eastern border with India.

"I am again telling you that Pakistan will act very responsibly, and we have talked to all our friends that they will use their good offices to defuse the situation."

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has urged India not to "over-react".

India and Pakistan have fought three wars and were on the brink of a fourth over a 2001 militant assault on the Indian parliament.

India's ruling Congress party said any response would be "carefully considered" but made it clear that a line had been crossed.

"We have been confronted by a rising tide of terrorism for some time but the attack in Mumbai was qualitatively different and calls for immediate and stern action," Congress party spokeswoman Jayanti Natarajan told reporters.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is due to visit India on Wednesday, said it was crucial that Pakistan exhibit "complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation" with the Indian investigation into the attacks.

"What we are emphasising to the Pakistani government is the need to follow the evidence wherever it leads and to do so in the most committed and firmest possible way," she told reporters accompanying her on a trip to Europe.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino also said she had "heard nothing that says that the Pakistani government was involved," adding that US President George W Bush was briefed in the White House situation room on the Mumbai attacks.

Pakistan has repeatedly underlined that it is fighting its own battle against Islamist insurgents, who have taken their bloody campaign to the heart of the Pakistan capital and stressed the two nations have a common enemy.

Lashkar, which has been battling Indian troops in Kashmir, was banned by Pakistan in 2002.

Public outrage in India was fuelled on Monday by fresh reports that clear warnings of a coming assault were ignored.

The Hindustan Times said a captured Lashkar operative had told his Indian interrogators back in February that the militant group was planning an attack on Mumbai's five-star hotels.

Tension between India and Pakistan date to the post-independence partition of India in 1947 that created the Islamic state of Pakistan and led to horrific bloodletting between Muslims and Hindus.

India has also had its share of homegrown unrest, from Muslims to Maoists to Hindu extremists, and Indian officials have repeatedly declined to blame Pakistan directly for the Mumbai attacks.

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