Ex-U.S. Official Cites Pakistani Training for India Attackers

Published: December 3, 2008
WASHINGTON — A former Defense Department official said Wednesday that American intelligence agencies had determined that former officers from Pakistan’s Army and its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency helped train the Mumbai attackers।
But the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that no specific links had been uncovered yet between the terrorists and the Pakistani government.
His disclosure came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held meetings with Indian leaders in New Delhi and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with their Pakistani counterparts in Islamabad, in a two-pronged effort to pressure Pakistan to cooperate fully in the effort to track down those responsible for the bloody attacks in Mumbai last week.
Also on Wednesday, a “fully functional” bomb was found and defused at a major Mumbai train station that had reopened days earlier, the Mumbai authorities announced. The discovery raised terrifying questions about why the authorities had failed to find it all this time.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people marched through Mumbai, both mourning the at least 173 dead and protesting the failures of Indian politicians and security services to protect citizens.
Ms. Rice strove to balance demands on both countries. She said that Pakistan had a “special responsibility” to cooperate with India and help prevent attacks in the future, here and elsewhere. At the same time, she warned India against hasty reaction that would yield what she called “unintended consequences.”
“The response of the Pakistani government should be one of cooperation and of action,” she said at an evening news conference in New Delhi with her Indian counterpart, Pranab Mukherjee. “Any response needs to be judged by its effectiveness in prevention and also by not creating other unintended consequences or difficulties.”
Mr. Mukherjee said his government was convinced that the attackers and their “controllers” came from Pakistan. He said he had conveyed to Ms. Rice “the feeling of anger and deep outrage in India” and said that his government was prepared to act “with all the means at our disposal” to protect Indian territory and citizens.
Both American and Indian authorities have concluded that there was little doubt that the Mumbai attacks were directed by militants inside Pakistan, and Indian officials have said they have identified three or four masterminds of the attack, including a leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Yusuf Muzzamil.
But Ms. Rice said it was premature to comment on whether any particular organization was responsible for the attacks on India’s financial and entertainment capital. She described the assault last week as distinct from others that had struck India since it targeted high-profile targets, including those frequented by foreigners, and appeared to be designed to “send a message.”
Ms. Rice said Pakistan had assured her that it would cooperate with India in its search for those responsible for the slaughter in Mumbai. She said President Asif Ali Zardari “has told me he will follow leads wherever they go” but she made clear that Washington expected him to do so wholeheartedly.
“This is a time for everybody to cooperate and to do so transparently, and this is especially a time for Pakistan to do so,” she said.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is officially banned in Pakistan, but it has been linked to the country’s powerful intelligence service and is believed to have moved its militant networks to Pakistan’s tribal areas.
For the moment, Mr. Zardari is playing down any links to Pakistan, including the Indian identification of the surviving attacker as a Pakistani. “We have not been given any tangible proof to say that he is definitely a Pakistani. I very much doubt that he’s a Pakistani,” Mr. Zardari told CNN’s “Larry King Live,” saying that his government would take action if India produced evidence to support the claim.
He also indicated that he would turn down an Indian demand, made on Monday night, to hand over about 20 fugitives, some of them linked to organized crime, said by India to be living in Pakistan. Rather, Mr. Zardari said, they would be tried in Pakistani courts if there were evidence to support a trial.
In Islamabad, Admiral Mullen met with President Zardari; the Pakistani national security adviser, Mahmud Ali Durrani; and several top military officials, including the Army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani, and the new intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha.
Admiral Mullen pressed the Pakistani leaders to crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba’s network of training camps, including those in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, and the organization’s guerrilla recruiting efforts, an American military official said.
In New Delhi, response to a question, Ms. Rice said that the sophistication and choice of targets in Mumbai distinguished it from previous attacks. Earlier in the day, also in response to a question, Ms. Rice was asked about any possible involvement by Al Qaeda. “Whether there is a direct Al Qaeda hand or not, this is clearly the kind of terror in which Al Qaeda participates,” she said.
The bomb was found in a bag the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the old Victoria station, one of the sites singled out for attack last week. It held about 20 pounds of explosives and was rigged with a timer, the Indian authorities said, but it was not clear whether it had not been activated or had malfunctioned.
The bag, apparently left behind by the attackers a week ago, had been collected along with a large pile of luggage that passengers had abandoned as they fled. That is where the police found it on Wednesday.
The station has been open for days, with thousands of passengers streaming through, and the discovery raised new questions about the capability of Indian security services.
There were conflicting accounts about how the bomb were found. Some reports said that the police had been tipped off by the surviving attacker, but others said a sniffer dog found it during a routine sweep of the abandoned luggage ahead of an officials visit. It was rendered neutral on the spot, the authorities said, and then subsequently removed for analysis. Train service was not disrupted for the maneuvers.
Ms. Rice’s diplomatic agenda takes place as Washington is seeking high-level cooperation in different spheres with both India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed neighbors. Washington wants Pakistan to help defeat Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents along the border with Afghanistan.
But Pakistani security officials have threatened to withdraw troops from the lawless border region to redeploy them if India and Pakistan slide toward their fourth war since independence from Britain in 1947, Reuters reported.
In October, Washington opened a new chapter of cooperation with India when Congress gave final approval to a breakthrough agreement permitting civilian nuclear trade between the two countries for the first time in three decades.
Under the terms of the deal, the United States will now be able to sell nuclear fuel, technology and reactors to India for peaceful energy although New Delhi tested bombs in 1974 and 1998 and never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In exchange, India agreed to open up 14 civilian nuclear facilities to international inspection, but would continue to shield eight military reactors from outside scrutiny.