Ansari arrest confirms Pak role: PC

The war of words happened between Home Minister P Chidambaram,while addressing a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram,and Rehman Malik,Pakistan’s Senior Advisor on Interior Affairs,who spoke to reporters in Islamabad within hours of Chidambaram making his comments.

Chidambaram said Abu Jundal had confirmed during his interrogation that he was in the control room in Karachi giving directions to the terrorists in Mumbai.

“This has confirmed our suspicion that there was some organised effort which had some kind of state support. When I say,state actors,at the moment,I am not pointing fingers at any particular agency (within Pakistan). But clearly there was state support or state actors’ support for the 26/11 massacre. The argument that non-state actors were behind the massacre is no longer valid,” Chidambaram said.

This is not the first time that New Delhi has blamed state actors in Pakistan for the Mumbai attacks. Chidambaram himself has said several times that the attacks could not have taken place without the backing of “state actors” — an apparent reference to government institutions like the ISI,the military or other such agency in Pakistan.

Though the Home Minister did not name any particular organisation today,Pakistan’s Rehman Malik took it to be a comment on the ISI and went on applaud the agency whose role in the war on terror was “well recognised by everybody”. “We are proud of our ISI,which is defending Pakistan,” he said,and claimed that the “elite agency” was the target of a “propaganda campaign”.

He then sought to remind New Delhi that not just Abu Jundal,but two other suspects in the Mumbai attack case,Fahim Ansari and Sabahuddin Ahmed Malik,were Indian citizens.

“Zabiuddin is Indian. He was caught in India. He did everything in India. Why are you then blaming Pakistan? He is your citizen. That means your agencies failed to control your citizen. Please have a look at your systems as well,” Malik was quoted by PTI as saying.

Malik sought information from India about Jundal’s interrogation reports in which he is supposed to have admitted to his role in planning and executing the Mumbai attacks. But he reiterated that New Delhi must focus on the role of Indians in the attacks. He said the involvement of Jundal meant that there was “something wrong with your system too”.

“India must stop blaming ISI for all terrorist incidents,” he said. He then pointed to the rise of “Hindu terrorism” in India and demanded the deportation of Col S K Purohit,a former Indian Army officer who is a suspect in the 2008 Samjhauta blasts case,to Pakistan.

“We warned you (India) three years back that Hindu extremism is coming to your country. Your own Taliban is emerging there. So now we have seen the result and I wish best of luck to India so that the law enforcement agencies are able to do something to stop it,” he said.