Author: Sam Dolnick
Publication: Yahoo News
Date: January 5, 2009
URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090105/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_india
India handed Pakistan detailed evidence on
the Mumbai attacks on Monday that included information on interrogations,
weapons, and data gleaned from satellite phones that officials said proved
Pakistani "elements" were behind the deadly siege.
Indian authorities said the evidence shows
that Pakistan-based militants plotted and executed the attacks, but a top
diplomat said the gunmen may also have had ties to Pakistani authorities.
"Its hard to believe that something of
this scale ... could occur without anybody, anywhere in the establishment
knowing that this was happening," India's Foreign Secretary Shivshankar
Menon told reporters in New Delhi on Monday.
Menon dismissed Pakistan's repeated claims
that the attacks were carried out by "non-state actors," saying,
"Even the so-called non-state actors function within a state, are citizens
of a state ... We don't think there's such a thing as non-state actors."
Menon also called for Pakistan to extradite
the suspects so they could be brought "to Indian justice." Pakistan
has said any trials will take place in its own courts.
India has blamed the November attacks that
killed 164 people on Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based militant group, but
Islamabad has resisted the claims and requested evidence showing the attacks
were launched from across the border.
Indian officials said the dossier handed to
Pakistan - as well as to officials from the foreign countries whose citizens
were killed - will make their case, and it is now up to Pakistan to act.
"The material, as you know, is linked
to elements in Pakistan," Menon said.
"We are no longer interested in words,"
he added. "We want actual action against the perpetrators."
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed
Sadiq said the authorities are reviewing the evidence and declined to comment
further.
Pakistan has arrested at least two Lashkar
leaders accused of planning the attacks and launched a nationwide crackdown
on a charity believed to be a front for the militant group.
Menon dismissed those moves as insufficient
and said the charity was still operating and Pakistan authorities have not
informed India about the status of the two men they said they arrested.
"What we have seen so far does not impress
us," he said.
In Islamabad on Monday, U.S. Assistant Secretary
of State Richard Boucher met with Pakistani leaders and called for India and
Pakistan to work together in the investigation.
"It's clear...that the attackers had
links that lead to Pakistani soil," he said.
Menon declined to say whether the evidence
showed links to Pakistan's powerful spy agency, which has allegedly been tied
to attacks against India in the past.
Indian leaders have stepped up the rhetoric
about the possible involvement of Pakistani officials in recent days.
The top security official, Home Minister Palaniappan
Chidambaram, said Sunday in an interview with the news channel NDTV that "no
non-state actor can mount this attack without any kind of state help."
Tensions have been high between the nuclear-armed
rivals ever since the attacks. Pakistan has redeployed troops toward India
and away from the Afghan border, where authorities are battling militants.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars
against each other since they gained independence in 1947 - two over Kashmir,
a majority Muslim region in the Himalayas claimed by both countries. Despite
increased tensions, Indian leaders have made clear they do not want to fight
a fourth.
Pakistan's leaders have veered back and forth
from confrontational statements to conciliatory ones and on Sunday Foreign
Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said the country wanted "good relations
with its neighbors."
Much of India's evidence against the militants
comes from interrogations of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the only gunman to survive
the attacks. He has reportedly told authorities that he and his nine other
attackers were Pakistani, he was trained in Pakistan, and his handlers are
still there.
Pakistan has said it has no record of Kasab
as a Pakistani citizen. Pakistan's Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said
Monday authorities were still examining his claim.
The Mumbai attacks began Nov. 26 and lasted
for nearly three days. The 10 gunmen attacked 10 sites across India's financial
capital, including two five-star hotels, the main train station, popular restaurants
and a Jewish center.
- Associated Press reporters Nahal Toosi and
Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Ashok Sharma in New Delhi and Khalid Tanveer in
Multan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
