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World Jewish News
Pakistan responds to Indian dossier as Biden arrives
10.01.2009
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Friday Pakistan had sent India a response to evidence from the Mumbai attacks as U.S. vice president-elect Joe Biden arrived on a trip aimed at easing tension in South Asia.
Ties between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India deteriorated sharply after coordinated attacks by 10 gunmen on the Indian city of Mumbai in late November that killed 179 people.
India blamed Pakistani militants from the outset. But Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said this week for the first time that the assault must have had the support of "some official agencies" in Pakistan.
Pakistan has denied involvement by state agencies and said Singh was ratcheting up tension.
Pakistan confirmed on Wednesday the lone surviving gunman from the attack was Pakistani, and Gilani said on Friday Pakistan's main security agency had sent India a response to a dossier of evidence from the attacks India presented this week.
"Our ISI has given their feedback," Gilani told reporters, referring to the military's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
He did not elaborate but said Pakistan would cooperate if more information was required.
India said the evidence linked Pakistani militants to the attacks, and included data from satellite phones and the surviving attacker's confession.
Gilani said it was regrettable India had frozen a four-year-old peace process that had brought better ties between the rivals who have fought three wars since 1947.
"The situation on our eastern border has once again become very fragile," Gilani told a seminar in Islamabad. "The world must not let tension between India and Pakistan escalate."
Biden, a Democrat and the outgoing chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, arrived in Pakistan with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of the U.S. Armed Services Committee, a U.S. embassy spokesman said.
Biden told President Asif Ali Zardari the new U.S. administration wanted to support Pakistani stability and its nascent democracy while Zardari briefed Biden on efforts in the campaign against militancy, his office said.
A U.S. counterterrorism official said in Washington on Thursday al Qaeda's operations chief in Pakistan, Usama al-Kini, and a top aide were believed to be dead.
The official declined to say how or when the men, both Kenyan, died, other than it was in South Waziristan, on Pakistan's Afghan border.
There were conflicting reports in Pakistan where two low-level intelligence officials said the men were among three people killed when a U.S. drone fired a missile on January 1. But a senior security official said he had no confirmation.
Источник: REUTERS
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