Pak media tells its govt to get real

Pakistan’s assertion that there is no terrorist infrastructure on its soil will be taken with “a very big pinch of salt” and foot-dragging on the probe into involvement of Pakistani elements in the Mumbai attacks will result in Pak being “deemed guilty until proven innocent”, the media in Pakistan said on Saturday, in a turnaround from its anti-India line.

Referring to the Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman’s remarks that Pakistan has no terrorist infrastructure on its soil, The News said one would have to question whether the tribal areas in the north-west “are part of Pakistan or not”. Another influential daily, The Dawn, in an editorial titled ‘Taking stock’, said the government should issue a “progress report” on its own probe into the attacks. “Otherwise Islamabad will not be able to counter criticism that facts are being withheld.”

The criticism grew sharper in India Saturday. PM Manmohan Singh raised the ante by demanding  that “criminals”  behind the Mumbai carnage be  handed over to India.

In uncharateristically harsh words, the Prime Minister hoped for “some sense” to prevail on the Pakistan leadership. “It  has to take action on the demand from all civilised countries that the perpetrators be brought to book. We hope these criminals will be handed over to us to face trial,” he said at a news conference on a visit to Shillong.
The message from Manmohan Singh was not just to Pakistan but to the international community as well that New Delhi will not be satisfied until those it wanted, including Lashkar-e-Taiba’s  Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi who India suspects is the man behind the Mumbai plot, are brought to trial in India.

This follows efforts by international players to find a face-saving formula that will allow the nuclear-armed states to sit around the negotiation table once again. Diplomatic circles in Islamabad said the civilian government in Pakistan could not  hand over the JuD leaders to India, because it was not strong enough take on the military, which was already apprehensive when ‘concessions’ were being held out to New Delhi by President Asif Ali Zardari. Keeping this in mind, the Americans who had asked Pakistan to hand over the suspects to India, seem willing now to go along with a trial in Pakistan’s courts.

While refusing to extradite the Mumbai terror suspects, Zardari has assured the US that his govenrment will take steps against Pakistan-based non-state actors if India shares solid evidence about their involvement. US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson had a meeting with Zardari on Friday, while on Saturday US Ambassador to India David Mulford met Home Minister P Chidambaram, who is going to Washington next week. India is reported to be compiling a dossier on the role of Pakistan-based elements in the terror strikes to share with the world even as Islamabad continues to be in denial mode.

The evidence includes the confession of the terrorist held in Mumbai, Ajmal Amir, the logbook recovered from the vessel in which the 10 terrorists came from Karachi, records of satellite phones used by the attackers and transcripts of conversations between the attackers and their handlers in Pakistan. The US FBI is also working with Indian investigators to piece together the evidence.

The Pakistan media too is now questioning the denial mode of the Pak government. In an editorial titled “Denying the obvious”, the Pakistani daily The News said several senior officials, including former President Pervez Musharraf, had publicly said since the 9/11 attacks that there were facilities in the country “where those fighting the state of Pakistan and committing terrorist acts receive training and other assistance”.

Members of the government and extremists themselves have said “there exist even some places where suicide bombers are produced, through a regimen of indoctrination and training in the use of weapons, suicide vests and so on”, the paper said.

“The remarks by a Foreign Office spokesman on January 1 that Pakistan has no terrorist infrastructure on its soil are going to be taken with a very big pinch of salt by even many Pakistanis,” the editorial stated.

The News also wanted to know the source of the “suicide bombings and other instances of terrorism” that hit Pakistan in the past two years. It pointed out that the Taliban had a “stranglehold” over large parts of the tribal areas and the Swat valley.

“Are the extremists, who seem to be clearly in control in such areas and to whom most if not all acts of terrorism inside Pakistan are traced to, foreign aliens who train in other countries and are teleported to Pakistani soil to carry out their nefarious activities?” it asked.

The newspaper Dawn pointed out that media reports of the confessions of LeT members had “not been denied at the highest levels in Islamabad”. “Foot-dragging will get us nowhere, and we need to explain what headway, if any, has been made in our own investigations. A progress report is the need of the hour.

Pakistan’s intelligence resources could verify the “authenticity or otherwise” of intercepts of phone conversations between LeT commanders and militants holed up in a hotel in Mumbai.  “The sooner this is done, and the facts placed before the nation and the world, the better,” it said. If any LeT commander had “admitted to his role in the carnage, that confession too should be acknowledged”.

The editorial in the Dawn said: “There will be no loss of face if it turns out that Pakistanis were among the militants who attacked Mumbai. Egged on by India, much of the world believes that anyway.

“We need to act decisively against militants and terrorists operating from Pakistani soil, not on account of pressure exerted by India or America, but because therein lies our own salvation. The enemy within is a far greater threat than any external foe.”

The News also cautioned that the remarks about terrorist infrastructure not existing on Pakistan’s soil would “do nothing but undermine the already low credibility that the government (or at least sections of it) has on such matters. The Foreign Office statement may have been made for domestic consumption but it should remember that most Pakistanis and certainly the rest of the world scrutinizing our every move are not fools,” it said.