Pakistan on Tuesday regretted Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's allegation that it is pursuing terrorism as state policy and that it is whipping up war hysteria. “This is a baseless allegation,” national security adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani said when asked for comments on Dr Singh's statement in New Delhi on Tuesday. He said Pakistan being a victim of terrorism itself was committed to fight the menace. Agencies quoted Pakistan as saying that such an approach was “fraught with grave risks”.
About the allegation that Pakistan was whipping up war hysteria, he said nothing could be far from the fact. Pakistan only responded in a defensive exercise to shift some troops to the border following hostile statements coming from India and its troop movement along the border.
Dr Singh's statement was received with a considerable mix of surprise and shock and many analysts wondered what had prompted such serious allegations from a very cool and sedate person like Dr Singh.
There were speculations that Dr Singh was disappointed by the initial Pakistani response to the Indian dossier and thought that Pakistan was deliberately engaged in a state of denial instead of taking the Indian claims seriously.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Tuesday called on President Asif Zardari and both leaders were reported to have discussed the statement. An official later said the two leaders reaffirmed Pakistan's resolve to extend every possible cooperation to India in the investigation of the Mumbai attacks.
Making a statement in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, foreign secretary Salman Bashir said the Indian Prime Minister's statement betrayed a lack of knowledge of the ground realities. He told the senators that the Foreign Office was fully alive to its responsibility to counter India’s current propaganda blitz to malign and isolate Pakistan.
Salman said Pakistan was cooperating in finding out the truth behind the Mumabi attacks and was determined to take action against those against whom there was concrete evidence. The committee was also informed by the government that the dossier received from India on Mumbai attacks did not contain credible evidence of complicity of any Pakistani organisation.
Much of it is based on confessional statement of Ajmal Kasab captured by the Indian authorities during the attack on November 26, a senior official told the Senate panel. He said the authorities concerned were closely examining the evidence cited in the dossier.
