India’s Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned Pakistan’s ambassador to lodge an official protest over the Mumbai attacks, the Press Trust of India (PTI) said.
In New Delhi’s first formal complaint to Islamabad, Pakistani High Commissioner Shahid Malik was handed a message concerning his country’s alleged ”failure to curb terrorism emanating from its soil”.
India’s Foreign ministry has said investigations have shown that all the militants involved in the Mumbai attacks were Pakistani nationals.
Pakistan’s government has denied it was in any way linked to the atrocities, which left more than 170 dead and close to 300 wounded.
India handed over the written protest just hours after New Delhi warned the carnage in Mumbai was a major setback for the slow-moving peace process launched by the South Asian neighbours in 2004.
”It is an evolving situation, but what has happened is a grave setback to the process of normalisation of relations and the confidence-building measures with Pakistan,” Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said.
”These gunmen were all from Pakistan. We are talking about elements in Pakistan,” Sharmasaid.
Meanwhile, Indian investigators said on Monday the militants who attacked Mumbai had months of commando training in Pakistan.
The attacks, which struck Mumbai’s two best-known luxury hotels and other landmarks in the city of 18-million, are a major setback for improving ties between India and Pakistan.
The White House said United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would visit India on Wednesday, underscoring the seriousness with which Washington viewed the attacks.
”I don’t want to jump to any conclusions myself on this, but I do think that this is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that is what we expect [from Pakistan],” Rice told reporters travelling with her to London.
Two senior Indian investigators told Reuters on condition of anonymity that evidence from the interrogation of Azam Amir Kasav, the only gunmen of the 10 not killed by commandos, clearly showed that Pakistani militants had a hand in the attack.
The clean-shaven, 21-year-old with fluent English was photographed during the attack wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with the Versace logo. He has said his team took orders from ”their command in Pakistan”, police officials said.
The training was organised by the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, and conducted by a former member of the Pakistani army, a police officer close to the interrogation told Reuters on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak.
”They underwent training in several phases, which included training in handling weapons, bomb-making, survival strategies, survival in a marine environment and even dietary habits,” another senior officer told Reuters.
The Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Taiba made its name fighting Indian rule in Kashmir but was also blamed for an attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 that brought the nuclear-armed neighbours close to war the next year.
Lashkar had close links to Pakistan’s military spy agency in the past, security experts say, although the government in Islamabad insists it too is fighting the group and other Islamist militants based on its soil. — AFP, Reuters