Even as the Pakistani authorities have so far denied deportation of any fugitives or terror-accused to India, they are under renewed pressure from the US to hand over Zaki Al Rahman Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai terror attacks, according to Dawn, a leading newspaper of Pakistan.
Dawn has quoted US and diplomatic sources to say that “Pakistan faces tremendous pressure from the US to extradite to India Zaki Al Rahman Lakhvi”. It also hinted that the US administration has given a taped conversation of Lakhvi with the Mumbai terrorists. Diplomatic sources in Washington have told Dawn that after checking the tape, US experts have confirmed that “it was genuine and that the speaker was Lakhvi”.
Indian establishments see this development as a result of their lobbying with the international governments in pressurizing Pakistan to hand over the accused. During the recent meetings with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Indian leadership had emphasized on getting back the terror masterminds from Pakistan.
Even as Pakistan rejected India’s proofs as “unacceptable in any court of law”, the Manmohan Singh government did not baulk down. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told Business Standard: “We are not asking Pakistan to file a case against them in courts. We are asking the Pakistan president to take action against them and dismantle the terror network.”
After a few days of the worst terror attack in India, government agencies had identified Lakhvi and Yusuf Muzammil as masterminds of the Mumbai terror plan and asked for their deportation.
Both of them are top leaders of the Lashkar-e-Toiba group. In the first week of December, Pakistan had announced that Lakhvi and some of his top aides had been arrested but rejected India’s demand to hand them over.
In fact, during the meeting with Indian government after the Mumbai attack, Rice had asked what message India would like her to deliver to Pakistan. Indian officials conveyed that the main agenda should be to get back at least some from the list of 40 most-wanted fugitives submitted by India.
Mukherjee said, “What is Pakistan’s connection with people like Masood Azhar? His aides hijacked an aircraft in a third country (Nepal) and took it to a fourth country (Afghanistan). He was released as the government had to save lives of innocent Indians. Why Pakistan is getting involved in this whole episode.”
According to Dawn, “Officials in Islamabad, however, appeared reluctant to accept the intercepts of Lakhvi’s alleged confession, provided to them by American and British intelligence agencies, as authentic.”
Meanwhile, as a part of India’s ongoing diplomatic pressure tactics, the external affairs minister held a series of meetings with Indian ambassadors of the West Asia region during the past two days. According to sources, the ambassadors have been asked to build pressure against Pakistan in those Muslim-dominated countries.
