NEW DELHI, 5 October 2006 — Pakistan has to prove it is sincere about working with India to counter terrorism, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh warned after police accused Islamabad of plotting blasts that killed nearly 200 commuters in Bombay. “Pakistan will have to walk the talk,” to back up its promise to cooperate on terrorism, Manmohan told reporters Tuesday night.
“Whatever has been discovered (by Bombay police), we shall share that information with Pakistan and test them on how sincere they are in carrying forward the commitment I and President (Pervez) Musharraf have underlined,” Manmohan said on his plane trip home from South Africa.
Bombay police chief A.N. Roy on Saturday publicly accused Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), of orchestrating the July attacks on trains that also wounded 800.
Pakistan has pledged to take action if India produces evidence to show that ISI was involved in the Bombay bombings, but has denied any role in the attacks. India froze peace talks with Pakistan in the aftermath of the attacks but agreed to continue the dialogue after a meeting between Manmohan and Musharraf in Havana on Sept. 16.
The leaders decided to “put in place an India-Pakistan anti-terrorism institutional mechanism to identify and implement counterterrorism initiatives and investigations.” When asked how the proposed counter-terrorism mechanism would work, Manmohan said: “We have set up this mechanism. How else can we ask for information except through a mechanism like this?” “The mechanism is yet to take off,” he said.
But once it does, “then we will test the waters,” Manmohan said. He added that the peace process cannot “move forward until both countries sincerely work to gain mastery over this menace.” India’s National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan echoed Manmohan’s warning.
“If Pakistan is willing to help us out with this and says, ‘Ok that they (militants) are located in Islamabad or Karachi,’ the mechanism can operate. But if every time if it (Pakistan) comes back to us and says, ‘It is not true,’ then of course it means they are not willing to cooperate,” Narayanan told Times Now television.
Highly-placed sources said yesterday that India will give Pakistan names of its nationals suspected to be involved in the blasts along with evidence. The joint mechanism is expected to take off when the two foreign secretaries meet in November.
Bombay Police Commissioner Roy and Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) chief K.P. Raghuvanshi met Union Home Secretary V.K. Duggal yesterday to discuss the issue of Pakistan’s involvement in the blasts.
Bombay police have claimed at least 11 Pakistani nationals were involved in the blasts. The attacks, they say, were planned by the ISI and carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) with the help of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Azam Cheema, LeT commander in Rawalpindi, is suspected to be the mastermind behind the blasts.
“The joint mechanism will not change the nomenclature of ‘enemy’ that the two sides use to describe each other, but still we must not reject it altogether as this is an opening point to talks,” former army Lt. Gen. Afsir Karim told AFP.
Retired Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak said India, which accuses Pakistan of infiltrating militants into disputed Kashmir, had no choice.
“We must involve diplomatic, economic, technological and military options and this planned mechanism could be one of the tools,” said Kak, the director of the privately-run Center for Strategic Studies think-tank.
However, the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has branded the mechanism a “national betrayal.” “The perpetrators of cross-border terrorism have been co-opted as partners in our fight against terrorism and the distinction between the aggressor and the victim of aggression have been done away with,” said Yashwant Sinha, a former BJP foreign minister.
