ISLAMABAD, 19 July 2006 — Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf warned yesterday that any stalling in the peace process would play into terrorists’ hands.
“We must not allow such terrorist acts to undermine the historic opportunity for lasting peace between Pakistan and India,” Musharraf was quoted as saying in a news release issued by the Information Ministry.
India put off talks between foreign secretaries due this week in New Delhi to review progress in the peace process, saying the atmosphere in the wake of the blasts was not conducive.
Musharraf told the National Security Council, that delaying the peace “because of terrorist attacks would be tantamount to playing into the hands of the terrorists.”
Although there has been no breakthrough yet in investigations into the Bombay attacks, Indian suspicions have fallen on Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group fighting Indian rule in disputed Kashmir, and the Pakistani military spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.
A grieving Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke in Bombay last Friday of Pakistan’s failure to tackle terrorism, saying “terror modules” in India are being instigated and supported by elements from across the border.
Pakistan has condemned the attacks on India’s financial and commercial hub and offered full cooperation with any Indian investigation, just as it did after a series of blasts killed dozens of people in New Delhi last October.
Musharraf said that instead of unsubstantiated allegations and aspersions, if the Indian side had any concrete information it should be shared with Pakistan in order for security agencies to help with the investigation.
The National Security Council also discussed the deteriorating situation in the Middle East. Leader of the opposition Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who is a member of the NSC, did not attend the meeting.
Over 150 Taleban Militants Arrested
Authorities arrested scores of Taleban militants in raids overnight in the southwest province of Balochistan, taking action that Afghanistan, the United States and NATO powers have long called for. More than 150 Afghans were arrested during an operation ordered by the Baloch government in the past two days.
According to police almost all of them were Taleban fighters, though some were held for lack of proper documents.
“All of them are Taleban and veteran fighters, not madrasa students. They are Afghans and were living here illegally,” said Salman Saeed, deputy chief of police in the province.
The hard-line Taleban movement sprang out of madrasas in the early 1990s. Saeed said there would be more raids elsewhere in Balochistan over the coming days.
Among those caught in Quetta on Monday evening, police said, was Mullah Hamdullah, a former commander of Taleban forces in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, where British troops have met fierce resistance since their deployment a few months ago.
The Afghan government, the United States and NATO powers with forces in Afghanistan all want Pakistan to act more forcefully against the Taleban, particularly in the Baloch capital Quetta where many settled after they were ousted from power in 2001.
US President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have spoken to President Pervez Musharraf in the past few months about the need to do more to help quell the insurgency in the southern Afghan provinces.
Orders for the crackdown came from the provincial government, a coalition that includes pro-Taleban militants, and officials spoke of growing impatience with Afghans in Quetta, while stressing they were not targeting genuine refugees.
“The Cabinet, last week, instructed the law enforcement agencies to drive them out of the province. They are troublemakers in Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan and all of them will have to go back,” said Raziq Bugti, a spokesman for the provincial Balochistan government.
