Chidambaram presses Pak to take action against Hafiz Saeed

Contrary to the warmth that marked the Indo-Pak foreign secretaries’ talks in Islamabad one day ago, the interior ministers of the two countries reportedly found it difficult to move towards a breakthrough on counter-terror cooperation during their talks on the sidelines of the SAARC summit on Friday.

Union home minister P Chidambaram, the first Indian minister to visit Pakistan since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, met his Pakistani counterpart, Rehman Malik, for talks on terrorism, a subject which had stopped the normalisation of relations after the terror strikes. Their meeting was preceded by the interior secretaries’ meeting to set the agenda for the talks. Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik Saturday described his talks with Chidambaram as a good beginning. However, Chidambaram was less diplomatic, urging Islamabad to put more suspects on trial for links to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

Chidambaram said he had raised the issue with Pakistan’s interior minister amid meetings of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Islamabad.

Talking to newsmen in Islamabad, Chidambaram said: “I am quite confident that something good will emerge out of that meeting.”

Although the Indian home minister did not say whom New Delhi wants to be prosecuted in Pakistan, it is believed that he has referred to the Jamaatul Daawa ameer and the founder of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed. However, the Pakistani side has not yet given an assurance that it would proceed against more suspects in the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008.

It may be recalled that the outcome of the foreign secretaries’ and the interior ministers’ parleys will decide the tone for a meeting between the two foreign ministers next month.

The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan had agreed on the need for jointly dealing with terrorism, but had left it to the two interior ministers to work out the details. But informed sources privy to the discussions warned against expecting any dramatic development or grand gestures. Indications were that the two leaders might settle for an incremental progress, beginning with small-scale confidence-building measures between the two countries, such as the release of the detained fishermen, reactivation of the judicial commission on prisoners, return of confiscated boats, and simplifying procedures for dealing with inadvertent border crossings and violations of maritime boundaries by fishermen.

The foreign office sources in Islamabad say that during his talks with the Pakistani interior minister, Chidambaram expressed dissatisfaction with the trial of the alleged 26/11 mastermind, commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and felt that Pakistan was not pursuing the prosecution wholeheartedly. However, Rehman Malik differed with Chidambaram and maintained that India should respect the Pakistani courts’ decisions in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks case, just as it honoured an Indian court’s verdict in the trial of Ajmal Kasab.

Chidambaram shared with Malik the findings of the interrogation of Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Headley by an Indian CBI team in the United States. However, Malik reportedly failed to give satisfactory answers to queries by his Indian counterpart.

The Indian interior minister also took up the issue of increase in infiltration into Jammu & Kashmir from the Pakistani side of the Line of Control (LoC).

He was of the view that the Pakistani authorities had not taken the action required against Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the Jamaatul Daawa ameer, and the alleged mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Chidambaram asked the Pakistani authorities to hold a speedy trial of those accused of planning the attacks.

However, Rehman Malik said that as no credible evidence had been found to substantiate the Indian accusations, the Pakistani courts could not take any action against him. He said that Pakistan had asked the Indian government to hand over the principal accused in the Mumbai attacks, Ajmal Kasab, but the plea was turned down in the light of a court decision. “We honoured the Indian court’s decision in that case,” Malik said.