By NNN-PTI,
Islamabad : Amid strains in bilateral ties following the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan has expressed its readiness to work closely with India to “expose the hidden hands” behind the strikes and said it did not want terrorists to derail the peace process.
“I have assured Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of our complete cooperation in investigating these attacks. We are prepared to engage India closely to expose the hidden hands behind these attacks,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in his address at a dinner for the mission heads of EU states.
“While the terrorists may try to derail the peace process between Pakistan and India, we should not allow them to succeed in their nefarious designs,” he said on Friday night.
Pakistan, he noted, had condemned the terrorist attacks in Mumbai “in the strongest words”.
Gilani said Pakistan and the EU have a common stake in the war against extremism and terrorism.
“Internally we have evolved a well thought out multi-pronged strategy to restore peace in (the tribal areas) and parts of NWFP. Our policy has a greater chance of success because it has both political and public ownership,” he said.
Noting that this policy is succeeding, Gilani said the local population in several tribal areas had “risen against the militants”.
“An improvement of the situation in the tribal areas will have a salutary impact on the security situation of the country as a whole,” the Prime Minister said.
However, he said that the “sustainable resilience” of the militants is “directly correlated to the availability to them of drug money from Afghanistan”. This source of terrorist financing must be checked, he added.