Pakistan on Friday claimed there was nothing to warrant pointing fingers at it in the Mumbai train blasts.
K J M Varma
ISLAMABAD: Rejecting India's demand for deportation of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and Hizbul Muhajideen chief Syed Salahuddin, Pakistan on Friday claimed there was nothing to warrant pointing fingers at it in the Mumbai train blasts.
A strongly worded statement by the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said the fact that after 10 days of the blasts India had little to say other than to mention Ibrahim and Salahuddin "demonstrates that there was nothing to warrant the irresponsible act of finger-pointing at Pakistan immediately after the Mumbai attack."
The statement came in response to Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna demanded the deportation of Ibrahim and Salahuddin and a ban on Jamat-ud-Dawa, political wing of Lashker-e-Taiba terrorist outfit, a day after Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf offered to help in the probe into the blasts if India gave proof.
The Foreign Ministry statement said India made similar demands and allegations after the attacks on Indian Parliament and Chattisinghpura massacre of Sikhs in Jammu & Kashmir.
"Pakistan rejects the rehash of baseless allegations made by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesman while commenting on the President's offer to help in the Mumbai blasts investigations," it said.
"This has become a routine with India. On earlier occasions, similar Indian accusations were belied by independent enquiries such as in the case of Chittisinghpura incident of March 2000 and the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament which exposed involvement of elements internal to India," the statement said.
Since the composite dialogue started in 2004, both sides handed over lists of wanted persons during the interior/home secretary talks in which Pakistan has given "evidence of terrorist infrastructure" against India, the Foreign Ministry statement said.
"We have further given evidence of terrorist infrastructure on the Indian soil that operates against Pakistan. While we have yet to get any response from the Indian side," it claimed.
Without naming Ibrahim or Salahuddin, it claimed that the Indian list included "persons who are not in Pakistan, or some of those who had been associated with the Kashmiri freedom struggle including the chief of a well-known Kashmiri political party that has representation and offices in Jammu and Kashmir as well as in Europe and the United States."
"To link these lists, which have been exchanged every year, to our serious offer to help with investigations of Mumbai terrorist attack establishes the paucity of substance in Indian allegations," said the statement.
It claimed that the "repetition of familiar conjectures and allegations" about terror training camps and infrastructure in Pakistan "does not lend them any credence."
"The fact that there is no terrorist infrastructure in Azad Kashmir became fully known to the international community with the opening of the entire area along the Line of Control to international non-governmental organizations and relief teams as well as NATO and other foreign contingents after the October earthquake," it said.
Pakistan's actions in fight against terrorism are "well known to and appreciated by international community," claimed the statement, which was silent on Sarna's assertion that India provided "quite substantial evidence" to Islamabad during May 31 Home Secretary-level talks about the presence of terrorist groups and fugitives on its territory.
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