NEW DELHI: As the Manmohan Singh government faces flak for allowing the mention of Pakistan's "concerns" about Balochistan in the joint statement
the prime minister signed in Egypt, Islamabad seems determined to compound his difficulties.
On Wednesday, Pakistani media carried reports quoting official sources suggesting that Singh agreed to the mention of Balochistan when his Pakistani counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani confronted him in Sharm el-Sheikh with a dossier detailing India's covert subversion in the restive province of Balochistan.
The report in the Dawn claimed the dossier also had details of India's role in fomenting trouble in other areas of Pakistan as well. It said it was India that was responsible for the attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team and the Manawan police academy, apart from maintaining a terror training camp in Kandahar from where trained Baloch insurgents were sent into Pakistan. "Operatives of RAW who remained in touch with the perpetrators of the attacks have been identified and proof of their interaction have been attached. Besides, description of Indian arms and explosives used in the attack on the Sri Lankan team has been made part of the dossier," the paper said.
The PMO denied the claim. "No such dossier was given to us," a senior source told TOI.
But the report, based on claims made by close aides of Gilani, can feed into the perception that the reference to Balochistan may be used by Pakistan to harass India and to seek to turn the attention away from the ISI's brazen collusion with terrorists.
If this was not enough, a report in the New York Times based on its conversations with senior officials of Pakistan may undercut any perception that Pakistan agreed to make good its promise to crack down on terrorists during the Sharm el-Sheikh talks.
Senior Pakistani sources quoted in the NYT report made it clear that their government had no intention of taking any action against Taliban leaders like Sirajuddin Haqqani, who engineered the attack on the Indian mission in Kabul or Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Hafiz Saeed. ISI officials in briefings with US media have said, "Saeed deserved to be freed because the government had failed to convince the courts that he should be kept in custody. There would be no effort to imprison Saeed again, in part because he was just an ideologue who did not have an anti-Pakistan agenda."
Haqqani, ISI officials said, was no threat to anybody, though US and Indian officials have given Pakistan evidence of his being the mastermind of the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
The claim that Gilani gave a dossier to Singh in Egypt has strengthened the apprehension here that this might become the norm from Pakistan.
The story in the Dawn goes on to say, "The evidence of Indian link lists the safe houses being run by RAW in Afghanistan, where terrorists are trained and launched for missions in Pakistan. The dossier also broadly covers the Indian connection in terror financing in Pakistan."
Quoting Gilani's aides, the report says they confirmed his discussions of India's involvement in the attack on the Sri Lankan team.
Now, Pak details ?Indian hand? in Balochistan - India - NEWS - The Times of India