External affairs minister, S.M. Krishna, began his tour of Pakistan on Wednesday with talks on terrorism. The minister called for prompt and decisive action on the part of the Pakistan government to address India’s concerns about terrorism in general and, in particular, the delay in the prosecution of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) commander
Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and six others who are being tried in a Pakistani court on charges of planning and facilitating the Mumbai attacks. The court has asked the Pakistan government to respond to Lakhvi’s bail plea by Saturday when the matter will come up for hearing again.
New Delhi has laid down some markers for taking the bilateral engagement to a higher level and it has urged Islamabad to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism operating from its soil, bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice, and to take appropriate action against individuals such as Hafiz Saeed who spew vitriol against India and threaten to hold the bilateral ties to ransom. According to reports in a section of the Pakistani media, Hafiz Saeed has heightened the rhetoric by raising the issue of Kashmir and sharing of river waters.
Home secretary G.K. Pillai set the tone for the foreign minister’s talks in Islamabad when he reiterated New Delhi’s stand that the ISI was behind the Mumbai attacks. “It was not just a peripheral role. They (the agency) were literally controlling and coordinating it from the beginning till the end,” Mr Pillai said.
He sought to suggest that New Delhi had come upon new information about the ISI’s role from Headley’s interrogation in the US.
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‘I would like a game of tennis with Qureshi’
Islamabad, July 14: If Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi plays tennis, then “we would like to play a game of tennis”, Indian external affairs minister S.M. Krishna said here on Wednesday.
Responding in a lighter vein after he was asked if India and Pakistan would resume their cricketing ties, Mr Krishna said: “I do believe in playing tennis. But I don’t know if Qureshi plays tennis. If it is so, we would like to play a game of tennis.” —IANS