Washington: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said on Tuesday his government was not responsible for last week's attacks on Mumbai and said he doubted India's claim the lone surviving gunman was a Pakistani.
"The state of Pakistan is no way responsible," Zardari told CNN's Larry King Live program.
Indian has said the 10 terrorists who killed nearly 200 people in the three-day rampage in Mumbai were from a group based in Pakistan.
Azam Amir Kasav, the only gunmen not killed by Indian commandos, told investigators he is a Pakistani citizen, Mumbai police chief Hasan Gafoor said.
But Zardari said India has provided no proof the gunman is 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," Zardari said.
"The gunmen, plus the planners, whoever they are -- they are stateless actors who are holding hostage the whole world," he said.
Zardari said if India produced evidence that a Pakistani group was behind the attacks, his government would take action against them.
After the attacks, India renewed a long-standing demand Islamabad hand over about 20 terrorists New Delhi believes are hiding in Pakistan.
Zardari said if India provided proof against the fugitives, Pakistan would let its own judiciary handle the cases.
"If we had the proof, we would try them in our courts, we would try them in our land and we would sentence them, he said.
Transcript:
Larry King: Mr President the Indian government is demanding that your nation handover some 20 suspected terrorists who are believed to be living in Pakistan. What is your response to this...Among those are Dawood Ibrahim, a powerful gangster, Masood Azhar, a terror suspect from an Indian prison in exchange for the release of hostages. And Hafiz Mohammad a former chief of a terrorist group. Are you going to comply with that?
Zardari: I'm definitely going to look into all the possibility of any proof that is given to us that at the moment these are just names of individuals. No proof, no investigation, nothing has been brought to, forward. We have offered to take this step forward and cooperate with the Indians, I'm willing to have my security adviser and their security in charge of our internal security and their internal security head a joint committee, which we've proposed to the Indians for a joint investigation in all of the Bombay incident.
Larry King: And if you had the proof you would turn them over?
Zardari: If we had the proof we would try them in our courts, we would try them in our land, and we would sentence them.
Zardari blames 'stateless actors' for Mumbai attacks
(Inputs from CNN and Reuters)
Comments
0 comment