By IANS,
Islamabad/Kolkata/New Delhi : Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is set to receive from Pakistani investigators a report on their probe into the Mumbai terror attacks, even as India said it was still waiting for the report. According to reports in Islamabad, the law and interior ministries have vetted the results of the probe by the Federal Investigation Agency on the basis of a dossier India had provided Jan 5 pointing to the involvement of the Pakistan-based Laskher-e-Taiba (LeT) terror group in the Mumabi attacks.
The results of the probe would now be sent to the prime minister, who is likely to hand it over to Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Satyabrata Pal, the reports added.
Gilani had said Friday the report would be handed over Monday or Tuesday but this certainly did not satisfy Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
“I am yet to receive any official communication from Islamabad so far,” Mukherjee told reporters in Kolkata.
Mukherjee said irrespective of statements by Gilani or any other Pakistani authority, he would not comment unless there was an official communication via the diplomatic route.
“My point is clear and simple. Until and unless I receive official communication from the Pakistan authorities on the results of the probe, it is difficult for me to make any comment,” Mukherjee maintained after flagging off the Murshidabad Express from the Kolkata terminus.
Mukherjee’s deputy Anand Sharma also asked Pakistan to honour its commitments on prosecuting the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks that claimed over 170 lives, including those of 26 foreigners, and injured over 300.
“Everyone knows which organisations were involved (in the Mumbai carnage). It is for Pakistan to honour not only the assurances and commitments it has given to the international community and to India, but Pakistan as a nation state must also respect the international law,” Sharma told reporters in New Delhi.
“The entire world is watching Pakistan and by obfuscating and deflecting, Pakistan can only hit its low credibility,” Sharma added.
Meanwhile, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has once again blamed non-state actors for the Mumbai mayhem and said they would not be permitted to dictate their agenda and rewrite the sub-continent’s foreign policy.
“He said that non state actors responsible for the Mumbai blasts wanted to dictate their own agenda and rewrite the foreign policies of Pakistan and India which would not be permitted,” Dawn News channel reported Saturday.
Zardari was speaking at a reception in North West Frontier Province capital Peshawar Friday night that provincial ministers and senior government officials, among others, attended.
Zardari has often said in the past that non-state actors were responsible for the Mumbai carnage and that it was Pakistan’s responsibility to act against them.
“Yes, definitely. I do not shrug away from that position,” he told Newsweek magazine in December, adding: “Anybody from my soil is my responsibility”.
However, the only action that Islamabad has taken is to seal the offices of the Jamaat-ud Daawa that the LeT morphed into after being banned in the wake of the Dec 13, 2001 attack on the Indian parliament that New Delhi blamed on the terror group.