A dossier was given to Pakistan on August 21, 2009 and yet another dossier containing Hafiz Saeed's name was handed over to Salman Bashir during the February 25 Indo-Pak talks.
India on Sunday refuted Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s remarks that it had not demanded the arrest of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed during foreign secretary-level talks on February 25.
In fact, at a news conference just after last month’s talks, foreign secretary Nirupama Rao had spent a lot of time referring to the hate speeches the JuD chief was being allowed to make against India. Rao said the speeches amounted to preaching violence and egging on more terror attacks.
Considering all this, it seems unlikely that the issue was not raised. Qureshi was asked by reporters on Saturday whether Rao had asked her counterpart Salman Bashir for the arrest of the JuD leader, often described by India as the man who masterminded the Mumbai terror strikes. He went on to say that Saeed did not figure in the conversation between the two.
“Saeed’s activities, including his recent vitriolic statements aimed at fomenting further acts of terrorism against India and the unhindered public space and freedom he enjoys in Pakistan, were raised strongly by India during the foreign secretary-level talks,” external affairs ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.
India said it has been demanding action against the JuD leader ever since the “barbaric and dastardly attacks in Mumbai’’ and the matter was raised with Bashir. At his news conference, Bashir had dismissed much of the evidence India forwarded as “literature” which would not stand in a court. A Lahore court had dismissed the case against Saeed. India wants him to be tried under Pakistan’s tough anti-terror laws. The JuD and its leaders have already been proscribed by the UN Security Council.
Though Saeed’s name did not figure in the first dossier handed over to Pakistan in January, it was in a dossier handed over in August last year. Subsequently, his name featured prominently in another dossier given to Bashir on February 25, 2010.
The foreign secretary level talks seem to have done little to ease the tension between the two neighbours. Pakistan has, in fact, launched a diplomatic offensive by calling in envoys of all important countries in Islamabad and briefing them about India’s stubborn refusal to move beyond terrorism in its exchanges with Pakistan. Islamabad wants the international community to tell India to get back to the composite dialogue.
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