ISLAMABAD, Jan 23: Pakistan has not given asylum to any Indian national and is trying to locate the alleged terrorists being wanted by India.

“First we will have to locate those non-Pakistani alleged terrorists whose extradition is being sought by India,” said the director-general of the Inter-Service Public Relations, Maj-Gen Rashid Qureshi.

He told reporters on Wednesday that Pakistan had not given or would give asylum to any alleged Indian terrorist or a criminal. “But we are locating them and once they are located they will be dealt with according to the law of the land. If there is case against anyone, we will proceed against him,” he said.

Talking about the list of terrorists wanted by Islamabad, he said that in the recent past the government wanted to bring back one of the Pakistani hardened criminals, who was given refuge in New Delhi by the Indian government. “But we were told by the Indian government that there existed no extradition treaty between the two countries, therefore nobody could be extradited to Pakistan,” he said. Pakistan at that time, he pointed out, did not make hue and cry like India.

In reply to a question about de-escalation, Maj-Gen Qureshi said there were no signs of withdrawal of troops to peace-time locations by India. “They are just making excuses,” he said, agreeing with a reporter that the Indian government was not likely to withdraw its troops until elections in Uttar Pradesh in April.

“And that is why we will continue monitoring the assembling of Indian forces on borders,” he said, adding that the military-to-military contact through Directors-General Military Operation was there to initiate any de-escalation. “But,” he pointed out, “their DGMO cannot do anything as the decision lies with the Indian government to pull back troops from borders.”

In reply to a question, he said he cannot say anything about the intentions of the Indian government for normalizing bilateral relations. “We want to see things happening on the ground ... their intentions do not affect us and that is why our armed forces will continue to be on high alert.”

Qureshi, who is the president’s press secretary, said the government was ready to hold a dialogue with the Indian government to discuss all matters.

Answering a question, he said that India could not swallow the economic development that was taking place in Pakistan and the fact that Islamabad was being appreciated both internally and externally. India, he said, wanted Pakistan to be economically weak and that was why it was reacting in one way or another to economic and financial support offered by the United States, Western countries and international donors. “Indians are paying more cost than Pakistan by maintaining their troops on borders,” he said.