Pakistan yesterday reversed its decision to send its powerful military intelligence chief to help probe the Mumbai terror attacks, as the army said it had not been consulted on the plan.
“A spokesman of the Prime Minister’s House has said that a representative of ISI will visit India instead of the director-general of the ISI to help in investigating the Mumbai terrorism incident,” a statement said overnight.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani to send the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief during a phone conversation on Friday, after New Delhi blamed the attacks on its neighbor.
Pakistan strongly condemned the assaults on the Indian commercial capital, which have left 195 people dead and 295 injured, and denied any involvement.
Both Gilani and Pakistani President Asif Zardari talked to Singh and offered to cooperate in the investigation amid concerns the row could unhinge a slow-moving process between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
Gilani cut short a stay in the eastern city of Lahore and flew back to Islamabad late pn Friday for urgent consultations after unease in military circles over the unprecedented move to send the ISI chief to India, senior government officials said.
Before the government reversal, chief army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas had said that the decision to send the ISI chief had not been conveyed officially to the army.
The statement indicating the government’s change of heart was issued a few hours later.
Gilani was to chair a special Cabinet meeting later in the day to discuss the ramifications of Indian allegations that elements from Pakistan were involved in the attacks.
An official in Prime Minister House said a special plane was being sent to India to bring back Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to participate in the emergency Cabinet meeting.
The Mumbai attack came while Qureshi was in India for bilateral talks with Indian officials.
The Indian allegation surprised Pakistan’s new democratic government, which has repeatedly vowed to work with India to combat terrorism in the region.
Security sources said it was unthinkable for Pakistan to disturb a peaceful eastern border with India as the country was embroiled in a long and drawn-out fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants on the western border with Afghanistan.
India has in the past accused the ISI of helping attacks on Indian targets by militants, including July’s bombing of the Indian embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul.
Gilani said Singh had told him that a preliminary investigation showed the attack originated from the Pakistani city of Karachi.
Qureshi said India had spoken too swiftly in blaming “elements in Pakistan” for the attacks and should avoid a “knee-jerk” response.
“My honest view is the government should have reflected more in coming to its conclusions,” Qureshi told a gathering of female journalists in the Indian capital on Friday.
“Let us build a new relationship or we could get sucked back into a situation that we have been living in for 60 years and that will be a tragedy as large as this one,” he said.
“We should avoid a replay of that beaten track of the blame game,” Qureshi said.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
RSS