NEW DELHI, Jan 21: India said on Monday it would extradite swiftly any Pakistani fugitives hiding out in its territory if Islamabad made such a request.

“Were any list to be provided by Pakistan of any Pakistani criminals sheltering illegally in India...I’ll immediately return them to Pakistan,” Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh told a news conference.

“There’s no question of India providing (them) any legal shelter,” he said, adding the government would “work double-time to send them promptly back to Pakistan” and would not engage in any “legal quibbling”.

Last weekend, Pakistan said it had a list of criminals who had taken refuge in India and wanted them to be handed over.

Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said Islamabad would ask Delhi to take action against them as a condition for its cooperation on a similar list of 20 men New Delhi accuses of terrorism and organized crime.

“Please let him send it (the list) by open fax,” Mr Singh told a media conference later. “He knows my fax number.”

President Pervez Musharraf has said he will never extradite Pakistani citizens to India but has not ruled out sending back Indian nationals. Mr Singh did not say what he would do if any Indians were included on the Pakistani list.

Mr Sattar said on Saturday Pakistan would forward its own most-wanted list “in the course of time” to India. Mr Singh said no formal list had been received yet. The standoff in which Pakistan has also massed troops on the border was sparked by an attack on the Indian parliament that New Delhi has blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri groups.

Mr Singh said that he could not understand Pakistan’s reluctance to act swiftly on the list submitted by India.

“I don’t see what advantage accrues to Pakistan to sit with these 20 criminals,” he said, adding 15 were the subjects of “red alerts” by the international police body Interpol. “There’s an international obligation on Pakistan to bring them to justice.”

He recalled that while he was defence minister, a Pakistani soldier crossed into India after committing a crime against his superior officer and the Pakistanis asked for his return.

“I knew if I sent him back it was like a death warrant for that soldier. But I did not wait for any extradition treaty...A criminal is to be returned (and) he was returned instantly.”

—Reuters