LAHORE: Contrary to the warmth that marked the Indo-Pak foreign secretaries’ talks in Islamabad one day ago, the interior ministers of the two countries reportedly found it difficult to move towards a breakthrough on counter-terror cooperation during their talks on Saturday.
Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, who is the first minister from Delhi to visit Pakistan since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, met his Pakistani counterpart, Rehman Malik, for talks on terrorism, a subject which stopped the normalisation of relations after the terror strikes. Their meeting was preceded by the interior secretaries’ meeting to set an agenda of the talks. Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik Saturday described his talks with his Indian counterpart P. Chidambaram as a good beginning. However, the Indian home minister was a bit undiplomatic when he urged Islamabad to put more suspects on trial for links to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Chidambaram said he had raised the issue with Pakistan’s interior minister amid meetings of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, or SAARC, in Islamabad.
Talking to newsmen in Islamabad, Mr Chidambaram said: “I am quite confident that something good will emerge out of that meeting”. Although the Indian home minister did not say whom New Delhi wants to be prosecuted in Pakistan, it is believed that he has referred to the Jamaatul Daawa ameer and the founder of the Lashkar-e-Toiba Hafiz Mohammad Saeed. However, the Pakistani side has not yet given a clear cut assurance that it would proceed against more suspects in the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008. It may be recalled that the outcome of the foreign secretaries’ and the interior ministers’ parleys is to set the tone for a meeting between the two foreign ministers next month to lay out a strategy for overcoming the ever growing trust deficit between Islamabad and New Delhi.
The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan had agreed on the need for jointly dealing with terrorism, but had left it to the two interior ministers to work out the nitty gritty. But informed sources privy to the discussions warned against expecting any dramatic development or grand gestures. Indications were that the two leaders might settle for an incremental progress beginning with small-scale confidence-building measures between the two countries like the release of the detained fishermen, reactivation of the judicial commission on prisoners, return of confiscated boats and simplifying procedures for dealing with inadvertent border crossings and violations of maritime boundaries by fishermen.
The foreign office sources in Islamabad say during his talks with the Pakistani interior minister, Mr Chidambaram expressed dissatisfaction over the trial of the alleged 26/11 mastermind Commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and said that his government felt that Pakistan was not pursuing the prosecution wholeheartedly. However, Rehman Malik differed with Mr Chidambaram and maintained that India should respect the Pakistani courts’ decisions in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks case just as it honoured an Indian court’s verdict in the trial of Ajmal Kasab. Mr Chidambaram shared with Malik the findings of interrogation of Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Headley by an Indian CBI team in the United States. However, Malik reportedly failed to give satisfactory answers to queries by his Indian counterpart.
The Indian interior minister also took up accusations of an increase in infiltration into the Jammu & Kashmir from the Pakistani side ofg the Line of Control (LoC). He was of the view that the Pakistani authorities had not taken the action required against Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the Jamaatul Daawa ameer and the alleged mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Chidambaram asked the Pakistani authorities to hold a speedy trial of those accused of planning the attacks. However, Rehman Malik said that as no credible evidence had been found to substantiate the Indian accusations the Pakistani courts could not take any action against him. He said that Pakistan had asked the Indian government to hand over the principal accused in the Mumbai attacks, Ajmal Kasab, but the plea was turned down in the light of a court decision. “We honoured the Indian court’s decision in that case.”
Ina related development on Saturday, a Rawalpindi-based Anti Terrorism Court (ATC) adjourned for the second consecutive time the trial of the seven suspects who are accused of involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks amidst apprehensions that any adverse developments in the case proceedings could hit the ongoing parleys between Islamabad and New Delhi. While the Pakistani authorities contended that the case proceedings had to be adjourned because the trial court judge Mohammad Akram Awan was on leave, some interior ministry insiders claimed on condition of anonymity that the adjournment was meant to avoid any adverse development during the proceedings that could give a wrong message to the visiting Indian government officials.
As lawyers defending the suspects, including Lashker-e-Taiba commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, reached Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi on Saturday, where the trial is being conducted, they were informed that Judge Malik Muhammad Akram Awan was on leave. They were also informed that the case had been adjourned for a week and the next hearing was scheduled for July 3, 2010. The case proceedings were earlier adjourned for two weeks on June 12 till June 26 for security reasons. The jail administration had actually requested Judge Akram Awan not to hold the hearing as huge quantity of arms had been recovered from the Adiala Jail premises which were reportedly piled up there with a view to carry out a jail break operation to ensure the release of Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and six others being tried for their involvement in the 26/11 terrorist attacks. On Saturday, Shahbaz Rajput, a lawyer defending some of the accused, protested the adjournment of the Lakhvi trial, saying these adjournments are all part of delaying tactics being adopted by the government to appease India.
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