Tuesday, December 02, 2008

INDIA ASKS PAKISTAN FOR FUGITIVES!

India has asked Pakistan to hand over 20 fugitives from Indian law who it believes are settled in Pakistan.
Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the names were given on Monday as India protested to the high commissioner of Pakistan over the attacks in Mumbai.
Pakistan said it would "frame a formal response" once it received the list. It was unclear what links the fugitives had to the Mumbai attacks.
Tensions have risen between the nations since the attacks that left 188 dead.
Twenty-two foreigners were among those killed and more than 200 people were injured.

See a detailed map of the area

Indian officials have repeatedly said in recent days there is evidence that the militants behind the attacks had Pakistani links.
Islamabad has denied involvement and warned against letting "miscreants" inflame tensions in the region.
India's new home minister has vowed to "respond with determination and resolve" over the crisis.
Palaniappan Chidambaram said: "This is a threat to the very idea of India, very soul of India."
But Mr Mukherjee said on Tuesday that India was not considering a military option.
The attackers in Mumbai opened fire in several locations, including a railway station, a popular restaurant, a hospital, two hotels and a Jewish centre.
The attacks on the two hotels - the once luxurious Taj Mahal Palace and Oberoi-Trident - and the Jewish centre resulted in nearly three days of running battles between elite commandos and the gunmen before the sites were secured.
"We have asked for the arrest and handover of those persons who are settled in Pakistan and who are fugitive of Indian law," Mr Mukherjee told reporters in the Indian capital, Delhi.
Indian media reports say the names include Dawood Ibrahim (a Mumbai underworld don blamed for masterminding the Mumbai serial blasts of 1993) and Maulana Masood Azhar (a Pakistani Muslim cleric freed from jail in India in exchange for passengers on a hijacked plane in 1999).
India says Dawood Ibrahim lives in Karachi, but Pakistani officials deny it.
Captured Gunman:
Suspect named as Azam Amir Qasab
21 years old, fluent English speaker
Told police he is from Faridkot village, in Pakistan's Punjab province
Said the attackers took orders from handlers in Pakistan

"We have to look at it formally once we get it and we will frame a response," news agency Reuters quoted Information Minister Sherry Rehman as saying in Islamabad.
On Monday, India's foreign ministry said it had summoned Pakistan's high commissioner.
"He was informed that the recent terrorist attack on Mumbai was carried out by elements from Pakistan," the ministry said in a statement.
India "expects that strong action would be taken against those elements, whosoever they may be, responsible for this outrage," the high commissioner was reportedly told.
A spokesman for the Pakistani high commission played down the meeting, saying discussions were held in a "cordial atmosphere".
The Indian government has faced growing anger over its handling of the attacks. The home minister and the chief and deputy chief ministers of Maharashtra state all submitted resignations.
There is no doubt that India is now slowly turning the heat on Pakistan's new democratic government in Islamabad to take "strong action" against those behind the attacks, says the BBC's David Loyn in Delhi.
But both governments have refrained from the kind of rhetoric that led to a major military escalation after militants assaulted the Indian parliament in 2001.
Since the attacks the focus has fallen on the lone gunman who survived and who is now in police custody.
According to Indian media reports, Azam Amir Qasab is from Pakistan and linked to the Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant group, Lashkar-e-Toiba, or Army of the Pure. The group denies involvement.
India's Deputy Home Minister, Shakeel Ahmad, told the BBC it was "very clearly established" that all the attackers had been from Pakistan - echoing similar comments from other officials in recent days.
Indian Minister of State of External Affairs Anand Sharma called the attacks a "grave setback" to the normalisation of relations with Pakistan.
Pakistan's Prime Minister, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, has said his country "would itself take action against the miscreants if there is any evidence against a Pakistani national".
BBC NEWS REPORT.

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