ISLAMABAD, Nov 30: Islamabad has termed as ‘unfortunate’ the Indian blame-game despite the assurance by New Delhi at the foreign secretary-level talks early this month that in future it would not accuse Pakistan without any evidence.
Reacting to Indian National Security Advisor M K Narayanan’s claim on
Wednesday that ‘nine Pakistan-based Jehadi terrorists’ were involved in the
July 11 Mumbai blasts, Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said: “Such statements are unfortunate in the absence of any evidence and merely propagandist in nature.”
Mr Narayan’s declaration comes a fortnight after Pakistan and India formally set up an institutional mechanism to cooperate in counter-terrorism efforts.
Ms Aslam told Dawn that Pakistan had so far received no official communication from India in this regard and neither had the government raised the issue with New Delhi. “No leads, information or evidence has been shared with us till now,” she said.The spokesperson recalled that Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon at the last round of talks had held out the assurance that India would not indulge in finger-pointing towards Pakistan without evidence, and added: “Clearly this claim is at variance with that understanding given to us.”
She stressed that a proper forum to raise such matters was the joint anti-terror mechanism and not the media.
Mr Narayanan told an international seminar in New Delhi on Wednesday that probe into the Mumbai attacks was complete and the involvement of “nine-Pakistan-based Jehadi terrorists”, of whom one died, had been confirmed.
According to him, the investigations had revealed that attacks were “masterminded by well-known Jehadi leaders in Pakistan” and eight Pakistanis allegedly involved in the attacks had managed to escape to their country.
Dismissing the allegations as baseless and malicious propaganda against
Pakistan, the spokesperson noted: “If India was serious about it and had evidence, it would have come forward and shared it with us by now.”
Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri, during his private visit to India that ended on Tuesday told CNN-IBN in an interview, that Pakistan would treat terror evidence presented by India seriously and look at it in the same sympathetic manner as the proof given by the US against Al Qaeda. He said this in response to a question.
