By IRNA,
Islamabad : Foreign Minister Qureshi Friday assured British Foreign Minister David Miliband that Pakistan will conduct a transparent inquiry into the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the Foreign Ministry said.
Qureshi said Pakistan will use the information provided by India as well as Pakistan’s own investigations, to establish legally tenable evidence to bring the perpetrators to justice.
He said Pakistan remains determined to uncover full facts pertaining to the Mumbai incident. He stressed the need for close cooperation between Pakistan and India to defeat terrorism, which is the common enemy of the people of Pakistan and India.
Qureshi also noted the positive aspects of Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s statement yesterday.
The two Foreign Ministers discussed bilateral relations, matters relating to the European Union, the Friends of Democratic Pakistan Forum, counter-terrorism, situation in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s relations with India and Israeli attacks on Gaza, a Foreign Ministry statement said.
Foreign Minister Miliband, who had come from New Delhi, briefed Foreign Minister Qureshi on his visit to India, it said.
Miliband arrived in Islamabad Friday after a three-day visit to India where he said Pakistan is not directly involved in Mumbai attacks but urged Islamabad to take action against the group blamed for the incident.
Sources said that during his parleys with Pakistani leadership, Miliband discussed a proposal for talks between India and Pakistan to end the impasse over the Mumbai attacks.
Diplomatic sources said one proposal that was mooted in some quarters was for talks between the National Security Advisors of India and Pakistan. However, this proposal ran into problems due to the recent sacking of Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Mahmud Ali Durrani by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani for his comments on the Pakistani nationality of Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone attacker captured in India for the Mumbai attacks.
India put its composite dialogue process with Pakistan on hold when tensions escalated between the two countries after the Mumbai incident. Britain is now reportedly keen to bring the two countries back to the negotiating table to defuse regional tensions, the sources said.
Miliband recently listed Pakistan as one of his priorities in the new year. He wrote in a blog that “2009 needs to be a year of progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan ? consolidating democratic governance, improving security, improving livelihoods”.
Britain has also been at the forefront of efforts to push Pakistan to take action against elements in the country linked to the Mumbai attacks, in which one Briton was killed.
Diplomatic sources said Britain had handed over to Pakistan some of the “most clinching evidence” on Pakistani links to the Mumbai attacks.
During his visit to Islamabad on December 14, Prime Minister Gordon Brown bluntly asked Pakistan to crack down on groups operating on its soil and pointed out that 75 per cent of major terror plots investigated by Britain had links “to Al Qaeda in Pakistan”.