The Pakistani president said yesterday the peace process with India must move forward to “foil the designs of the terrorists” who killed 171 people in Mumbai last month.
President Asif Ali Zardari also vowed to crack down on anyone involved in the attacks who was residing in Pakistan, saying a raid on Sunday on a training camp run by the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) group was evidence of his resolve.
“Pakistan is committed to the pursuit, arrest, trial and punishment of anyone involved in these heinous attacks,” he wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times.
PHOTO: AP
Sunday’s raid in Pakistani Kashmir was Islamabad’s first reported response to intense Indian and US demands for it to act against alleged perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks on its soil.
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who India has said was a mastermind of the assaults, and several other members of the militant group LET were arrested, an intelligence official and a senior government official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
The government has not officially released the names of those it is holding.
Late on Monday, the military said it has begun “intelligence-led” operations against banned groups like LET, but gave no more details.
Analysts say LET was created in the 1980s by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies to act as a proxy fighting force in Indian Kashmir. India accuses it in the Mumbai attacks.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947, but ties between the nuclear-armed neighbors had been improving in recent years and a slow-moving peace process was under way.
US officials fear a serious disruption in relations would dent its hopes for regional stability needed to better fight al-Qaeda along the Afghan border.
“To foil the designs of the terrorists, the two great nations of Pakistan and India ... must continue to move forward with the peace process,” Zardari wrote.
Analysts have said the peace process would likely be halted for several months or longer due to tensions triggered by the attacks, but no one on either side had formally suggested abandoning the negotiations.
Many experts suspect elements within Pakistan’s intelligence agencies keep some links with LET and other militants, either to use them against India or in neighboring Afghanistan, but US counterterrorism officials say there is no evidence linking Pakistan state agencies to the Mumbai attacks.
Indian officials say the sole Mumbai attacker captured alive has told them that Lakhvi recruited him for the mission and that Lakhvi and another militant, Yusuf Muzammil, planned the operation.
India has not commented on his reported arrest. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack did not confirm it, but said raid was a “positive step.”
Meanwhile, the Pakistani foreign ministry said yesterday it would not hand over to India any suspects they have arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks, but would try them under its own laws.
“The arrests are being made for our own investigations. Even if allegations are proved against any suspect, he will not be handed over to India,” Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said.
“We will proceed against those arrested under Pakistani laws,” he said.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
RSS