ISLAMABAD: Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik asked India to stop blame game as it does not serve anyone's interest and invited his Indian
counterpart home minister P Chidambaram for an open debate over the issue of Mumbai attacks investigations.
Offering to have an open debate with the Indian home minister over the probing of Mumbai attacks, Malik said, "I am ready for the debate anywhere in India, Pakistan or wherever his Indian counterpart likes."
Talking to journalists in Islamabad, Rehman Malik said Pakistan was sincere in the investigations into the Mumbai attacks and it filed the chargesheet in the court within the period of 76 days whereas Indians took more than 90 days to prepare the chargesheet.
Rehman Malik started off by pointing out that the first formal response to Pakistan's February 9 request for information came on June 20th and that too was in Marathi language. Besides citing other Indian lapses, he pointed out that India refused to share the Samjotha Express dossier which was of critical importance as "a friendly country, which is also close to India, had told us that one of the Mumbai terrorists was also involved in the Mumbai incident".
"We have submitted his (Saeed's) chargesheet and the remaining two persons who have been arrested; we will be giving their final charge-sheet. I will give the details in two or three days", Malik said.
"Initially the Indians said Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi was the mastermind and we arrested him...now they have started saying that Hafiz Saeed is the mastermind", Malik said.
Accusing India for the blame game, the minister said: "Let's stop the blame game and play fair game." "India gave the latest evidence only 10 days back and "we need a few days to evaluate its veracity and also whether it can take the test of our courts. We cannot operate on hearsay alone. We respect your courts, you respect ours" Malik added.
When his attention was drawn to the recent statement by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about another attack from the Pakistani soil, Malik responded, "There was a statement from the PM of India that they knew there might be Bombay-like attacks replicated in India by the Pakistani Taliban. Prime Minister sir, you are the chief executive, whatever information you have, it must have come from your Intelligence agencies, why didn't you share it with us? Why were you holding this information before the Bombay attacks? Why didn't you tell us? We are two countries we could have investigated it together. I am still ready, lets meet."
