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Delhi awaits Islamabad response while keeping its options open
India yesterday kept its options open in dealing with Pakistan and said it was awaiting Islamabad's response to its demand for strong action against militants based on its territory whom New Delhi blames for engineering Mumbai's bloody terror strikes.
- IANS
- Published: 23:25 December 2, 2008
- Indian police officers guarding the area around Mumbai's seafront landmark Taj Mahal Hotel chat as they read the morning newspapers on Tuesday.
- Image Credit: AP
New Delhi/Islamabad: India yesterday kept its options open in dealing with Pakistan and said it was awaiting Islamabad's response to its demand for strong action against militants based on its territory whom New Delhi blames for engineering Mumbai's bloody terror strikes.
Pakistan responded by offering India a joint team to probe the Mumbai attacks and underlined it will "frame a response" to New Delhi's demand for handing over 20 of India's most wanted men.
"We will await the response from Pakistan to the demarche [formal protest note]," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters on the sidelines of a function to inaugurate the India-Arab Forum.
"Now, we have in our demarche asked for the arrests and handing over of those persons who are settled in Pakistan and who are fugitives under the Indian law," Mukherjee added.
"There are lists [containing the names] of about 20 persons. [These] lists are sometimes altered and this exercise is going on and we have reviewed it in our demarche," Mukherjee said.
India had summoned Pakistan's High Commissioner in New Delhi Shahid Malik on Monday and lodged a formal protest, asking Islamabad to take strong action against those responsible for the Mumbai mayhem. The demarche also asked Pakistan to hand over 20 fugitives from Indian law who New Delhi believes are in Pakistan.
India's "most wanted 20 list" includes known terror masterminds like mob boss Dawood Ebrahim, Maulana Masoud Azhar, the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammad, which is suspected to have been behind the December 13, 2001 attacks on Indian parliament and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafez Mohammad Saeed. New Delhi suspects these fugitives have been behind major terror strikes in India over the years.
See also pages 6, 12, 33, 47
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