Diplomat denies Mumbai attacks planned in Pakistan
Friday, 30 Jan, 2009 | 07:36 PM PST |
NEW DELHI: A Pakistani investigation into the Mumbai attacks has shown they were not planned in Pakistan, the country's high commissioner to Britain told an Indian television news channel on Friday.
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have exchanged heated rhetoric since the Mumbai attacks that killed 179 people in November.
India says they were carried out by Pakistani militants who must have had support from Pakistani state agencies.
Pakistan denies that and says it will cooperate with Indian authorities.
Pakistani territory was not used so far as the investigators have made their conclusions, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, Pakistan's high commissioner in Britain, told India's NDTV channel in an interview on Friday.
It was the first time a top Pakistani official had commented in any detail about a dossier of evidence that India handed to Pakistan early this month. Pakistan said the dossier contained information, not evidence.
India says it has Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving member of the 10-man group which attacked several Mumbai landmarks. India says the men were all from Pakistan.
But in what could be an argument Pakistan might make in its report, Hassan said Kasab's nationality did not necessarily prove the hand of Pakistan in the attacks.
He does come from Pakistan, that doesn't mean that Pakistan has sponsored whatever he carried out in Bombay that day, Hassan told Indian TV channel CNN-IBN.
We are waiting for the report to be finalised and once the report comes it will make everything crystal clear. We do not think that evidence is credible.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who is in Davos, Switzerland, said the investigation was still going on and its findings would be released very soon.
Whatever the dossier, whatever the information ... we are probing into it, he said in comments to an Indian television channel aired by a Pakistan television network.
Asked about Hassan's remarks, Gilani said only the Ministry of Interior was authorised to comment on the investigation.
Gilani repeated a Pakistani pledge that it would not allow terrorists to operate from its territory and anyone found guilty of involvement in the Mumbai attack would be brought to justice.
An Indian foreign ministry spokesman in New Delhi said India had no word from Pakistan about the investigation and he had no idea when it would come.
Hassan said Pakistan hoped other countries would accept the findings.
We are not doing any whitewashing business. We believe in going about facts. Our findings will be acceptable, he said.
They categorically informed me that (the) UK was not involved. Pakistan was not involved. Its territories were not used for planning this operation, Hassan said
