Taking charge as Foreign Secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon questioned how Pak can deny involvement of ISI without looking at evidence.
NEW DELHI: One of the first things Shiv Shankar Menon did after taking over as foreign secretary on Sunday was to send out a blunt message to Pakistan: The time has come to act. India will confront Pakistan with evidence of its involvement in the Mumbai bombings and judge its sincerity in combating terrorism.
“We will take up the issue with Pakistan in view of the new evidence,” he told reporters in New Delhi, a day after Mumbai Police Commissioner AN Roy announced that investigations had given indications that ISI had planned the 11/7 serial blasts. “We will judge them not by their verbal actions, but what they actually do,’’ Menon said on Sunday.
It is clear that New Delhi will not halt the peace talks scheduled to start later this month with a meeting between the foreign secretaries. Instead, the government will share the information the Mumbai police has gathered with Islamabad. It will be a test case for Pakistan as far as India is concerned.
The peaces talks with Pakistan had been called off in the wake of the blasts. Then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pervez Musharraf met during the NAM summit in Havana last month and decided to restart dialogue.
They had announced the setting up of a joint mechanism to fight terror.
Now the process has received a setback with Saturday’s revelations. However, it must be kept in mind that the police findings will have to stand up to scrutiny in a court of law as well.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma reinforced India’s strategy. He said, “New Delhi will give concrete evidence to Pakistan in the blasts case and closely watch how it delivers on the promise made in the joint statement at Havana.”
Pakistan has rejected the Indian accusations. Tariq Azim Khan, Pakistan’s Minister of State for Information, said Islamabad would investigate the allegations if New Delhi shared its evidence.
— With inputs from Ajay Umat
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