December 14, 2008	Sunday	Zilhaj 15, 1429

PARIS, Dec 13: Pakistan on Saturday rejected Indian accusations that it was the “epicentre of terrorism” and accused some Indian leaders of using it as a convenient scapegoat for their own political agendas.

“Because of domestic political compulsions, some Indian leaders have been looking for a scapegoat” for the recent Mumbai attacks, its foreign minister said when asked to react to the Indian prime minister’s accusation.

“And when you want a scapegoat, Pakistan is (for historical reasons) the obvious choice,” Shah Mahmoud Qureshi told reporters in Paris, adding that “we have to rise above our petty politics for the larger interest of the region.”

He did not name any of the Indian leaders he was referring to.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made the accusation on Thursday and also said his country could not be satisfied with “mere assurances on an end to terror emanating from Pakistan”.

Qureshi said Islamabad was at the forefront of the global fight against terror and noted that “India does not blame the Pakistani government” for last month’s carnage in Mumbai that left 172 people dead.

He said Islamabad was doing its utmost to crack down on any terrorist groups on its territory, adding that Pakistan had offered to send a high-level team to carry out a joint probe with Indian officials into the attacks.

“We’ve made an offer. We’re waiting for their response,” he said, speaking on the eve of a meeting in Paris of senior envoys from Afghanistan, its neighbours and the world’s great powers to discuss the war-torn country’s future.

The talks will put Qureshi in the same room as Indian deputy foreign minister Anand Sharma, but he said that neither he nor the Indian minister had requested a bilateral meeting in Paris.

Qureshi noted that “one of the pillars” of the recently elected government in Pakistan was normalisation of relations with its giant neighbour.—AFP