India has told US about Pakistan’s link to Mumbai: Krishna

NEW DELHI - India has conveyed to friendly countries like the US that it has evidence of Pakistani state actors’ involvement in the Mumbai terror attack, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna has said.

“In our own way we conveyed to friendly countries,” Krishna told Karan Thapar in The Devil’s Advocate Programme. He was asked if India has made its Western allies aware of the Pakistani state involvement in the 2008 carnage.

“What was the reaction of the US or UK or for that matter any other third country for what we have brought to their notice, I think is something between ourselves,” Krishna said on CNN-IBN. “I do not think it could be aired in public domain.”

He was responding to a question on the response of friendly countries after India provided evidence to Pakistan Feb 25 about the involvement of two Pakistani Army officers in the Mumbai attack that killed 166 people.

“We are satisfied that we have been able to bring this to the notice of the friendly governments like the US,” he said.

India handed three dossiers to Pakistan at the Feb 25 meeting of foreign secretaries that included the names of two serving Pakistan Army officers, Major Iqbal and Major Samir Ali, linking them to the Mumbai attack.

This month, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said India believed that at least one serving Pakistani Army officer and another retired officer were in the “Control Room” in Pakistan giving instructions to the 26/11 attackers.

Does India have enough evidence to substantiate the allegation? Krishna skirted the question.

“If the home minister has made a statement of this kind, I am sure that he would be having enough evidence to substantiate that,” Krishna said.

Terming the foreign-secretary level talks as an ice-breaker, Krishna said India did not expect any “dramatic outcome” from the meeting.

“Let me put it this way that nothing dramatic was expected in the meeting between the two foreign secretaries,” Krishna said.

“We invited the foreign secretary of Pakistan to come to India so that we can start the talks, so that we could know what Pakistan’s position is,” he added.

Krishna stressed that he was not “disappointed at the talks because I did not expect much from that meeting”.

“It was a situation where we were trying to size up what Pakistan’s present thinking is. There, I think, we succeeded in assessing what Pakistan’s thinking is…I think it is a plus point,” Krishna said.