India, Pakistan agree on sensitive issues

PAKISTAN: Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan agreed Thursday to further a tentative rapprochement process and to bring to justice the perpetrators of the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks.

India’s Foreign Minister and Pakistani leaders spent the day locked in the third high-level talks in a six-month thaw since New Delhi broke off peace talks after Islamist gunmen killed 166 people in Mumbai in 2008.

The talks ran into extra time, delaying a news conference by six hours as the agenda focused on Indian concerns about terrorism and allegations that Pakistani spies orchestrated the Mumbai carnage, rather than on confidence-building measures.

Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said he would return to New Delhi “with an assurance from the highest level” of Pakistan’s political leadership over leads thrown up by the interrogation of suspect David Headley, arrested in the United States. Headley, the US-born son of a former Pakistani diplomat and an American woman, was arrested in Chicago last year and has pleaded guilty to scouting the hotels and other sites in Mumbai that were targeted by the militants. “I’m going back with the hope there will be further interrogation based on leads given by Headley,” Krishna told a news conference.

“If it could help unravel the conspiracy and go after the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks, there could be the biggest confidence-building measure.”

He invited his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, to visit India in the “near future”. “Pakistan would take the leads provided by the (Indian) home minister (on Headley) very seriously because we want to move on,” Qureshi said.

“There are important issues including terrorism and they should be addressed and we have to discuss them. We have agreed on the need to discuss important issues to make the process meaningful.”

ISLAMABAD, Friday, AFP