India and Pakistan have agreed to set up a joint anti-terror mechanism which would include “regular and timely sharing of information” as Pakistan promised to “look into” evidence presented by India of cross-border links. Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Muhammad Khan confirmed receipt of information pertaining to earlier attacks in Varanasi and New Delhi and not to the July 11 attack in Mumbai. Only last week, India had said it will not provide information on the 7/11 blasts because of legal reasons and this was confirmed again by Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon.
The joint mechanism will be run jointly by a three-member-a-side team to be populated by Additional Secretaries of respective foreign ministries along the format that India has with other nations with whom it has a counter-terrorism working relationship.
Menon did not divulge details on what was presented but said he wanted Pakistan to stop activities of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and their front organizations. Asserting the presence of terrorist camps in Pakistan , Menon said that India had identified individuals in Pakistan who are responsible and it was up to Pakistan to find out whether they had active support of the state. Acknowledging that there were terrorists within India, he said only cross-border terrorism was taken up with Khan and said that trading allegations publicly to embarrass each other is one practice that should be stopped. Menon also revealed that India would give consular access to Mohammad Fahaad, a suspected Pakistani national detained in Mysore for terrorist activities.
Khan rejected “finger pointing” at Islamabad “within 15 minutes” of the Mumbai blasts and said that terrorism had both “local impulses” (meaning Kashmir ) and “international dimensions” (meaning al Qaeda). He also reiterated that it would be a “dangerous folly” for India and Pakistan to “destabilize the other.” Pakistan had also accused India of fanning insurgency in Baloachistan.
As Khan eloquently rejected his nation’s links to terrorism in chaste Urdu, a Pakistani parliamentarian disclosed in the National Assembly of his membership in the LeT and a banned outfit in Pakistan . Parliamentarian Major Tanvir Hussain who is also the Parliamentary Secretary of Defense, later reiterated to a newspaper that he “often addressed congregations” and “deliver speeches” in functions organized LeT advocating “jihad.” He also said that he had extended “cooperation” to them but did not elaborate on what they were.
The meeting ended on a wide “gap” in respective positions on Siachen. While India wants authentication and documentation of existing military positions in the Siachen glacier before it would consider a military pull out, Islamabad was concerned that such a mechanism could be viewed as an “endorsement” India ’s “claims” over Siachen. India cannot accept this argument as it would mean giving up areas that it already owns.
Ending on a positive note, both nations agreed to continue with the fourth round of the Composite Dialogue in February next year and that Foreign Minister Mukherjee will visit Pakistan either in December or January. There was also on some agreement to allow pilgrims on either side to visit religious shrines on the other.
The first joint mechanism on terror meeting will happen next month.
