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Post Zardari visit: Bonhomie over, back to reality
A day after Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and PM Manmohan Singh's meeting, India's security establishment hit out at Islamabad for remaining in denial mode over terrorist elements such as Hafiz Saeed. HT reports. Will it go beyond the photo ops?
A day after Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's meeting, India's security establishment hit out at Islamabad for remaining in denial mode over terrorist elements such as Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed.
New Delhi, government sources said, would ask Islamabad to keep its promises to act against terrorists on its soil at the meeting of home secretary RK Singh and his counterpart, interior secretary K Siddique Akbar, expected to be held over the next few months.
Islamabad last week had proposed to have the annual meeting on April 16, a choice of date that has raised eyebrows in the Indian security establishment.
"Why would they propose April 16 if they are serious about the security component when it has been well known for months that a conference of chief ministers has been planned for this date," a senior government official said.
"We have asked for fresh dates after Parliament session," RK Singh told reporters in New Delhi.
The budget session of Parliament will end on May 22.
Other government officials also questioned Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who had lamented the lack of evidence to proceed against Saeed.
Echoing home minister P Chidambaram, who had recently accused his Pakistani counterpart interior minister Rehman Malik of reneging on his 2010 promise, a senior government official said India had handed over "sufficient evidence" to probe Saeed in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, not convict him.
"Essentially, Pakistan's argument is that they will probe him only after someone gives them the evidence to convict him," the official said.
It is in the face of this reluctance to investigate Saeed that the US announced its $10 million bounty for "information" that would convict Saeed.
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