India calls on Pakistan to hand over 40 fugitives

[David]

AP


NEW DELHI – India has called for Pakistan to hand over 40 suspects after the terror attacks that left 171 dead, a move that has raised tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals. However, India's foreign minister said Thursday that war is "not the solution."

The list of fugitives includes militants suspected in last month's Mumbai attacks, as well as those who have committed "other crimes" against India in the past, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in his first speech to parliament since the Mumbai siege last month.

Fugitives who have committed crimes in India are sheltering in Pakistan, he said. He added that he had told Pakistani leaders, "You arrest them, and hand them over to us."

Islamabad said it will arrest anyone proved linked to terror crimes and try them in Pakistani courts. Authorities there have insisted that the government was not tied to the attacks, which they say were carried out by "non-state actors."

Mukherjee dismissed that argument Thursday.

"Are the non-state actors coming from heaven? Or are they coming from a different planet?" he said.

Pakistani authorities have arrested two senior leaders from Lashkar-e-Taiba, the banned Pakistani-based militant group suspected in the Mumbai attacks. Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah are in Pakistani custody and are under investigation.

Officials have said Lakhvi was arrested Sunday in a raid on a militant camp close to the Indian border.

Mukherjee also urged Islamabad to go further by dismantling terrorist operations and camps believed rooted in the country. He appeared to soften hawkish talk Thursday when he said, in response to a lawmaker, war "is not the solution."

Earlier, he had said India was "determined to act decisively ... with all the means at our disposal."

Lal Krishna Advani, leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which is looking to unseat the Congress party in the coming elections, said the raids on Lashkar were not enough.

"We should not be fooled by this kind of actions," Advani said before parliament. "We consider it a war."

Meanwhile, India announced a massive overhaul of its security and intelligence agencies Thursday in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks that left 171 dead and provoked a public outcry over the government's response.

Among the new measures, the government will seek to create an FBI-style national investigative agency, beef up coastal security, better train local police, strengthen anti-terror laws and increase intelligence sharing, said Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, the country's top law enforcement official.

"Given the nature of the threat, we can't go back to business as usual," Chidambaram told Parliament.

The revamp represents the government's first detailed response to widespread public anger over security and intelligence failures in the attacks. Chidambaram has previously apologized for government "lapses" in the assault.

Meanwhile, police in Mumbai backed off of plans to produce the only surviving attacker, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, in court Thursday for a routine hearing, citing security concerns.

Instead, a magistrate came to police headquarters and granted authorities permission to hold Kasab for a further two weeks, public prosecutor Eknath Dhamal said, without providing details of the decision. Under Indian law, police can extend detentions for months on end before formal criminal charges are filed.

Kasab, who was captured by police early in the Nov. 26 attack, has been interrogated by authorities and reportedly offered key details about the planning of the assault and those responsible for it.

On Wednesday, police identified two more people involved in the training of the 10 attackers.

One of the trainers, identified only as Khafa and described as a senior operative in the banned Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, was their main handler after the men were selected for the attack, Rakesh Maria, Mumbai's chief police investigator.

The other man, another senior Lashkar militant identified as Abu Hamza, was responsible for much of the training they received while sequestered in a house in Azizabad, Pakistan, for three months to prepare for the attack, Maria said.

Abu Hamza was believed to be one of two gunmen responsible for the 2005 attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, that killed one scientist, Maria said. After that attack, Abu Hamza escaped back to Pakistan, he said.

Late Wednesday, U.N. Security Council panel declared Jamaat-ud-Dawa a terrorist organization, subject to U.N. sanctions, as sought by India and the U.S. It specifically designated four men connected to Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Lashkar as terrorists, including Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the suspected mastermind of the attacks.

The U.N. Security Council called Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which casts itself as a charity, a front group for Lashkar.