Rice pressures Pakistan over Mumbai attacks

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/081203/afp/081203154327asiapacificnews.html

Wednesday December 3, 11:43 PM

NEW DELHI (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Pakistan on Wednesday to "cooperate fully and transparently" with India's investigation into last week's Islamic militant attacks on Mumbai.

Speaking in the Indian capital, where she was holding talks with Indian leaders, Rice urged Islamabad to respond "swiftly and transparently" to New Delhi's accusations that the gunmen came from across the border.

Ties between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals have become badly strained in the wake of the devastating assault on Mumbai that left 188 people dead. The two countries have fought three wars since their 1947 independence from British rule.

"Pakistan needs to act with urgency and with resolve and cooperate fully and transparently," Rice told reporters before going into talks with Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee. She is also to meet with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

"That message will be delivered to Pakistan," said Rice, who was expected to fly to Islamabad on Thursday.


Although Rice said she refused to "jump to any conclusions about who is responsible," US intelligence officials have suggested the assault was the work of the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.




"This is a time for everyone to cooperate and to do so transparently, and especially a time for Pakistan to do so," she added.

An Indian government source told AFP that Rice will be handed evidence of a Pakistan link to the attack on a string of targets in India's economic capital including two luxury hotels, a Jewish centre, a popular cafe and a hospital.

The attack was carried out by 10 gunmen, some of whom arrived by boat. The official toll of victims stands at 188 dead and more than 300 wounded. Those killed included 22 foreign nationals.

India remains on high alert a week after the attacks, with Indian police on Wednesday discovering and defusing more explosives left behind at Mumbai's main railway station -- also one of the targets.

"This is part of the same consignment which the terrorists had brought on Wednesday night when they were attacking and running helter-skelter, some of the material had been left behind," anti-terrorism chief K.P. Raghuvashi said.

The situation was "under control" and a bomb disposal unit had defused the devices, he told AFP.

India says the only captured gunman has confirmed under interrogation that all the militants were from Pakistan and received their training there.

"We will put on the table information so far gathered," a senior government source said of the talks with Rice. "We plan to share transcripts of satellite phone conversations that link the terrorists to their Pakistani handlers."

The United States is particularly concerned about any military stand-off with India that might see Pakistan move troops from its western border with Afghanistan -- a crucial battleground in the US "war on terror".

The chief of the United States military, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff Admiral Michael Mullen, was also in Pakistan as part of Washington's efforts to avert a stand-off.

India called in the Pakistani ambassador earlier this week and demanded Pakistan arrest and extradite 20 terror suspects, including the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hafiz Saeed.

Others named were Maulana Masood Azhar, chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammed rebel group, and Dawood Ibrahim, who is wanted in India on charges of masterminding serial bombings in Mumbai in 1993 that killed around 300 people.

Pakistan has suggested setting up a "joint investigation mechanism" but says it wants concrete proof that all the attackers were Pakistanis.

"The state of Pakistan is no way responsible," Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari told CNN.

"I think these are stateless actors who have been operating throughout the region. The gunmen, whoever they are, they are all stateless actors who are holding hostage the whole world."

India's security and intelligence agencies have come under intense criticism over their handling of the incident, which has already forced the resignation of interior minister Shivraj Patil.

US networks this week reported that the United States had warned India in October that hotels and business centres in Mumbai would be targeted by attackers coming from the sea.

One US intelligence official even named the Taj Mahal hotel, one of 10 sites hit in the 60-hour siege by gunmen, as a specific target, ABC television said.

It said Indian intelligence officials intercepted a phone call on November 18 to an address in Pakistan used by the head of Lashkar-e-Taiba, revealing a possible attack from the sea.