Comments on Headley links baseless: Pakistan

Pakistan on Tuesday dismissed as "baseless accusations" National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon's remarks that David Headley was linked to the Pakistani establishment and intelligence agencies.

Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit "strongly refuted" Menon's comments about links between Pakistan's establishment and Pakistani-American Headley, who conducted surveillance of sites targeted during the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Basit said Menon's "baseless accusations were yet another manifestation of the Indian establishment's propagandistic stance toward Pakistan."

In a statement, Basit further said Menon's comments were "entirely inconsistent with the understanding reached between the leadership of the two countries" during a meeting on the sidelines of the SAARC summit in Bhutan that "terrorism was a common threat which needed to be addressed in a cooperative manner."

Menon has indicated that clear links between the Pakistani establishment and Headley were established during the Pakistan-American's recent interrogation by Indian investigators.

"For us, it's been brought home most recently by what we learnt from Headley, which confirms many of the things which we knew before. And it's really the links between the official establishment and with existing intelligence agencies, it's that nexus, which makes it a much harder phenomenon for us to deal with," he said.

"Unfortunately what we know and what we see suggests that these links or this nexus, in fact, will not be broken soon. If anything, it is getting stronger," he added.

The National Security Advisor's remarks follow Home Secretary G K Pillai's comments that Pakistan's ISI had planned and coordinated the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people in November 2008.

Pillai's comments were made on the eve of a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of India and Pakistan on July 15 and created a storm in Islamabad.