Pakistan has to act on Headley confessions, says India

ISLAMABAD - A day before his talks here, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said Wednesday that India expected Pakistan to act on confessions by terror suspect David Coleman Headley over the Mumbai terror attack.

Krishna also said that frequent anti-India statements by Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed, who is considered the mastermind of the November 2008 Mumbai attack, were not contributing to improving India-Pakistan ties.

“India expects some response (to Headley’s confessions),” the minister told Indian journalists, just two hours after arriving here on a three-day visit. “I am here to find out just what that response is.”

He quickly added: “We expect a satisfactory response (from Pakistan).”

Krishna said India expected “some movement from the Pakistani side” on the basis of what the Pakistan-born American Headley had told the Indian interrogators as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

“Headley’s interrogation has revealed many things. The whole world is aware that he has been interrogated not in India but by the FBI.”

He said the Pakistan government “will have to act” because it has been presented with “such irrefutable evidence” on Headley’s involvement with the Mumbai attack that left 166 Indians and foreigners dead.

Headley, who is now in an American jail, has reportedly admitted to acting as a scout for Hafiz Saeed to determine which spots in Mumbai needed to be attacked by the Lashkar.

Krishna also said that Saeed had been “consistently making statements and speeches which provoke people of Pakistan against India. Such tirades against India will not help smoothen our relations”.