ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan must address the "searing sense of injustice" in India over the Mumbai attacks and dismantle terrorist structures threatening regional stability, Britain's foreign secretary said Friday.
Pakistan, under intense international scrutiny, has rounded up scores of suspects since the November attacks in Mumbai and insists it will do all it can to help bring the culprits to justice.
Visiting British envoy David Miliband said the arrests were a significant "first step." But he said Islamabad had to move swiftly to bring charges against the suspects and curb the use of its territory to launch terrorist attacks.
"The action needs to go further and the action needs to go faster," Miliband said during two days of talks with Pakistani leaders in Islamabad.
He said Indian leaders had worked hard to improve ties with its neighbor and archrival but now they "very strongly need the Pakistani authorities to address the searing sense of injustice that Indians feel" about the Mumbai attacks.
With the international community providing substantial financial support to Pakistan, Miliband said Pakistan was also obliged to curb terrorism to prevent it from threatening a region that includes Afghanistan.
Britain has backed Indian assertions that Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based militant group that the U.S. links to al-Qaida, ordered the November siege that killed 164 people in its commercial capital.
Pakistan said Thursday that it had shut down extremist Web sites and suspected militant training camps as well as detaining 71 people in a deepening probe. It is studying a dossier of evidence provided by India, but said that more work needs to be done before it can begin any prosecutions.
India remains skeptical, and some officials have left open the possibility of military action — raising the prospect of a fourth war between the nuclear-armed rivals or at least tension that would distract Islamabad from its struggle against the Taliban and al-Qaida along its western frontier.
In New Delhi on Friday, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee reiterated India's demand that Pakistan investigate the attacks and hand its planners over for prosecution.
"We have never given up the demand that the perpetrators of the terror attacks be handed over to India," Mukherjee told reporters at a news conference.
Pakistan has ruled out handing over any suspects to New Delhi and insisted that it will prosecute them in its own courts.
No comments:
Post a Comment