INDIA’S Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon yesterday gave details of evidence dossier New Delhi has compiled on the Nov. 26 Mumbai terror attacks to China’s Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei, who is visiting the Indian capital. This week Home Minister Chidambaram traveled to Washington with the same evidence on the deadly assault in which 170 people were slain. In both cases, these are apparently the same data which has been handed to Pakistan with the request that named suspects be detained and sent to India. The question must be asked why India feels the need to be sharing this information with others when this is a tragedy that can only be resolved directly with Pakistan? The administration of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has made it clear that it will cooperate with Indian investigators but until now had not received the evidence. Now, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi says the Indian dossier is being examined closely.
Yet, New Delhi seems to be trying to pre-empt Islamabad’s response by putting pressure on it via Beijing and Washington. This is a dangerous maneuver at a time of cross-border tension and military build-up on both sides. The American involvement is particularly dubious given the widespread suspicion of US motives among Pakistanis. US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher was in Pakistan yesterday, ostensibly seeking to reduce tension between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. However, many will suspect that his visit will have included arm-twisting over the acceptance of the Indian evidence dossier on the Mumbai atrocity. This is really not the way to proceed. Far from badgering Pakistan to hand over the suspects, all seemingly alleged members of the banned terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), if outsiders have any role to play at all in this tense and difficult affair, it would be in helping to discover a mechanism whereby these individuals can be further investigated to the satisfaction of the Indian authorities and if the evidence stacks up, tried in a court of law.
If Zardari can be accused of unwisely initially denying any Pakistani involvement, New Delhi has been guilty, almost from the outset, of insisting that the Pakistan was knowingly involved in the Mumbai outrages. While Zardari has modified his position and action has been taken by his government to confine some LeT leaders, New Delhi has not let up in its insinuation that a powerful force in its neighbor, the intelligence service, the ISI is suggested, was in some way involved.
The November attacks were undoubtedly designed to poison the still shallow well of Indo-Pak understanding created all too slowly in the two years to last November. The terrorists were relying on an uncompromising response from Indian radicals and perhaps a backlash against Indian Muslims. This latter has not happened but Indian hard-liners do seem be driving hard on the dossier. If Washington is encouraging this dangerous course, it should stop. New Delhi would do well to remember that Washington has its own agenda in the matter and what is good for the US may turn out to be the opposite for India.
