NEWS

India to give credible terror evidence to Pak

By Onkar Singh in New Delhi
November 10, 2006

India will give credible evidence to Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistan foreign secretary level talks on November 14 and 15 in New Delhi on the Pakistani involvement in terrorist activities in India and provide leads in some of the cases to 'test' the honesty of the Pakistani side on the understanding reached between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pervez Musharraf in Havana, where both India and Pakistan had talked of using joint anti-terrorism mechanism to contain terrorist violence against India from Pakistani soil.

According to a source in the Ministry of External Affairs, "India has credible evidence and it would give some leads to Pakistan in some terrorists cases that need to be investigated at that end. Let us see what comes out of that. It would be a test case whether Pakistan is willing to curb terrorist activities against India from its soil as promised by it in the January 6, 2004, declarations," the source said.

The sources said that the issue of Dawood Ibramhim would also be raised during the talks by the Indian side. What is important is that the instances of Pakistan's involvement has come up in almost all the cases of terrorist attacks since Diwali 2005.

Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan will reach New Delhi on November 13 in the evening and the talks would be held on 14 and 15.

"He leaves for Pakistan on November 15," the source said. The third round of talks were scheduled to be held in July, but because of the Mumbai train blasts the talks could not be held.

The Union Cabinet had approved the parameters for the secretary-level talks on Thursday and the Indian officials had been given the necessary instructions on the Indian position on all the issues that are likely to figure during the crucial talks.

"These talks would be different from the earlier level of talks in the sense that we are going beyond confidence building measures. We are now talking of broadbased mutual relationship. We cannot punish the people of Pakistan for what the terrorists do. Earlier, Pakistan was saying that we sort out the Kashmir problem before taking up other issues. But everything depends upon their response," he said.

The sources denied that any date had been fixed for Dr Singh's trip to Pakistan. "It will take place in a good atmosphere," he said.

Onkar Singh in New Delhi

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