NEW DELHI, March 21, (AFP) - India's government says it has "overwhelming evidence" that "official agencies" of Pakistan were involved in the Mumbai attacks that left 165 people dead.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram also accused Pakistan in a television interview to be aired today of doing nothing to dismantle Islamist militant camps on its soil amid ongoing tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
"Given the overwhelming evidence we have, I am entitled to presume that official agencies (of Pakistan) were involved (in the Mumbai attacks)," Chidambaram said, referring to Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency and other bodies.
His comments came after India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in January said the Mumbai attacks must have had the "support of some official agencies in Pakistan" due to the sophistication of the assault.
India has blamed the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group for the November attacks. Asked if Pakistan had dismantled the militant infrastructure, Chidambaram told India's CNN-IBN network that "none" of the militant training camps had been destroyed "to the best of my knowledge."
The Pakistanis were only destroying "training camps that mushroom in villages with 'kutcha' (temporary) structures" and that "can be dismantled and erected elsewhere," he said. |
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