ISLAMABAD/SRINAGAR: Pakistani Foreign Minister Mahmoud Qureshi said that Pakistan’s findings of Mumbai’s terrorist attacks will satisfy Indian leadership. He told journalists yesterday in his hometown of Multan that soon Pakistan will share its own investigations with New Delhi. He said, “our investigations suggest that Pakistan’s soil was not used by the plotters of Mumbai’s terrorist attacks during November last.”
Pakistan hoped that the report of its just-completed probe into the Mumbai terror attacks would serve to ease subcontinental tensions that have risen in the wake of the carnage that India blames on elements operating from Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) that had been tasked with examining an Indian dossier on the Mumbai attacks had handed over its report to the Interior Ministry and the Law Ministry is now reviewing this, Qureshi said.
“Once the findings of the investigations into the Mumbai attacks is brought to light it will help defuse India-Pakistan tensions,” Qureshi maintained. “Pakistan will share the findings of the investigations with India,” he added.
Underlining the need for bilateral cooperation for conducing an effective probe, the minister added: “Pakistan is serious about the investigation and intends to take necessary action”.
On Friday, Qureshi had said Pakistan had shared with India the progress made in its probe into the Mumbai attacks but New Delhi says this is yet to be received. “High Commissioner Shahid Malik yesterday (Thursday) met Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram and updated him on the progress Pakistan has made so far in the investigations,” Dawn yesterday quoted Qureshi as telling reporters in Islamabad.
On its part, India on Friday said it is yet to receive “through proper channels” any response to the dossier holding it complicit in the Mumbai attacks and asked Islamabad to convey the ‘outcome’ of its investigations soon.
Meanwhile, the FIA on Friday presented to the Interior Ministry its preliminary report prepared on the basis of an Indian dossier on the Mumbai attacks. “I have seen the report and forwarded it to Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah for further examining it in consultation with the ministry of law,” Malik told reporters after a meeting with FIA officials. “I must reassure the international community that perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks would be brought to justice.”
Speaking in New Delhi on Friday, Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said: “We have not received any information through proper channels. This is not the way the government can respond. We have given them the material. We expect them to investigate and let us know the outcome of the investigation.” He was reacting to a question on reports in the media quoting Pakistani diplomats that suggested that Pakistan would claim that the Mumbai atrocity was not planned inside its territory.
“We will be amazed if they say so. This will be the end of whatever little credibility the Pakistani establishment has,” said official sources, who did not wish to be named. “It’s totally unacceptable,” said sources in response to Pakistan’s habit of speaking through media and third countries in the wake of the Mumbai carnage.
Meanwhile, Indian Army Chief Gen. Deepak Kapoor yesterday said the military was fully prepared to act or react in the manner the country’s political leadership wanted it to in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks.
“As far as the military is concerned, it acts or reacts in a manner the country’s political leadership wants it to,” Kapoor, who is on a visit to Srinagar, told reporters at the high security Badami Bagh headquarters of the army’s 15 Corps. Pointing out that post the Mumbai attacks there had been extra movement of troops on the Pakistan side as tensions between the two countries ran high, he added: “These tensions had, however, come down now”.
At the same time, the terror infrastructure “is very much in existence and continuing in Pakistan”. Kapoor said as the snows start melting and the high Himalayan passes reopen, the possibility of infiltration from across the border cannot be ruled out. “The security forces are taking all possible precautions to check infiltration through a three-tier mechanism,” he maintained.
— With input from Mukhtar Ahmad
