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Pakistan spy chief to aid Mumbai investigation

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan scrambled Friday to avoid a dangerous crisis with India over the terror attacks in Mumbai, sending its spy chief to share intelligence and countering Indian charges that “elements in Pakistan” were behind the carnage.

Clear Pakistani fingerprints on the attacks would endanger fragile peace talks between the nuclear-armed rivals and U.S. efforts to persuade Pakistan to focus on al-Qaida Taliban militants along the Afghan border.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani insisted Friday that such evidence would not be found.

“I am saying it clearly that Pakistan has nothing to do with this incident. Pakistan has no link with this act,” Gilani said. “We condemn it. The whole nation condemns it.”

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947. They remain at odds over the divided territory of Kashmir, and New Delhi has accused Pakistan of complicity in a string of terrorist acts on its soil.

The tension has eased in recent years, and the pro-Western government formed in Islamabad after February elections has made eye-catching overtures toward its neighbor.

India’s foreign minister on Friday ratcheted up the accusations over the brazen and well-planned attacks in its financial capital which began Wednesday night and killed more than 150 people, including 22 foreigners.

“According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible,” Pranab Mukherjee said. “Proof cannot be disclosed at this time.”

Indian home minister Jaiprakash Jaiswal said a captured gunmen had been identified as a Pakistani.

Still, Mukherjee’s comment suggested that militant groups based in Pakistan were suspected in the attack, rather than Pakistani authorities.

New Delhi’s past complaints about Pakistan — shared by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and some in Washington — have centered on its Inter Services Intelligence agency.

Kashmiri militants as well as the Taliban have served as proxies for Pakistan to exert influence in India and Afghanistan in the past, and there are doubts that Pakistan’s military, which controls the ISI, has fully abandoned that policy.

Pakistani leaders have vigorously defended the agency, and complained that their country is being scape-goated for Western failures in Afghanistan. Still, they have also made moves to reform the ISI, including appointing a new chief in September.

Gilani said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told him in a telephone call on Friday that there were “some indications” linking the Mumbai attack to Karachi, a chaotic metropolis on Pakistan’s Arabia Sea coast where a host of Islamic militant groups have a presence.

Gilani provided no details. However, he said he had granted Singh’s wish that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, hurry to India in person to share intelligence.

The highly symbolic move raised apprehensions among analysts and politicians in Pakistan.

“It’s almost admitting that someone from ISI is involved in this. I think it’s highly irresponsible,” said Tariq Azeem, an opposition leader.

But Gilani said Pakistan had “nothing to hide.”

The state of relations between Pakistan and India is vital for U.S. foreign policy in the region.

Incoming President-elect Barack Obama has said normalizing ties between the two South Asian countries will be a major plank of his broader campaign to stabilize Afghanistan.

Friday’s agreement and a series of Pakistani pledges of assistance and solidarity, suggest a crisis might be averted.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari also called Singh on Friday and cautioned against falling into the “trap of militants” by launching into mutual recriminations.

“The president said the government will cooperate with India in exposing and apprehending the culprits and the master minds behind the attack,” Zardari’s office said in a statement.

Zardari points to the loss of his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, to a gun-and-bomb attack last December to burnish his anti-terrorist credentials.

He raised eyebrows in both countries at the weekend by declaring that India posed no threat to Pakistan and promising that Islamabad would not use nuclear weapons first in a conflict. Zardari also called for their heavily militarized border to be opened for trade.

But his control of Pakistan’s powerful security agencies remains in doubt.

Kashmiri militants were blamed for attacking the parliament in New Delhi in 2001, a strike that brought the countries close to their fourth war.

While there has been less infiltration in recent years into Kashmir, India accused the ISI of helping Taliban militants bomb its embassy in the Afghan capital in July, killing 58 people.
(AP)

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Massacre in Mumbai: Up to SEVEN gunmen were British and ‘came from same area as 7/7 bombers’

By Justin Davenport , Rashid Razaq and Nicola Boden - (Mail Online UK)

British-born Pakistanis were among the Mumbai terrorists, Indian government sources claimed today, as the death toll rose to at least 155.

As many as seven of the terrorists may have British connections and some could be from Leeds and Bradford where London’s July 7 bombers lived, one source said.

Two Britons were among eight gunmen being held, according to Mumbai’s chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. At least nine others are reportedly dead.

The eight arrested were captured by commandos after they stormed two hotels and a Jewish centre to free hostages today. Despite the Indian authorities’ assurances that the situation was under control, the siege continued at the Taj Mahal hotel and explosions could still be heard in central Mumbai.

One security official said: ‘There is growing concern about British involvement in the attacks.’
But Gordon Brown has urged caution. He emerged from a conversation with India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to say there was no suggestion of a British link.

‘At no point has the prime minister of India suggested to me that there is evidence at this stage of any terrorist of British origins, but obviously these are huge investigations that are being done and I think it will be premature to draw any conclusions at all,’ Mr Brown said.

Senior Whitehall sources said it was too early to say whether there had been any involvement by British nationals but that security services, working with overseas partners, would be looking at any potential links to the UK.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith also said UK authorities had “no knowledge” of any British links with the massacre, while Foreign Secretary David Miliband said it was “too early to say” whether any of the terrorists were British.

As authorities tried to piece together the identities and motivations of the attackers, special forces were still battling with gunmen.

At the five-star Taj Mahal Hotel, officers were still locked in combat with up to six militants believed to be holed up in the ballroom.

The Indian authorities thought they had ended the siege there last night after they shot dead three terrorists and released hundreds of hostages, but it raged again today.

In a major army operation, soldiers threw grenades at the walls in a bid to smoke out the militants. Four bystanders were reported wounded in the crossfire.

Mumbai officials say more than 155 people in total have now died in the attacks. Another 370 were wounded.

The tragic figures include the bodies of another five hostages who were found dead inside the Nariman House Jewish Centre this afternoon after commandos finally secured the building.

Two militants were also killed. It is not known whether the Rabbi and his wife who were believed to be among the hostages are dead or alive.