India, US differ over Headley 26/11 info

NEW DELHI - India Friday reiterated that it did not get any specific information from the US over the 26/11 attacks even as Washington maintained that it has shared all the information with New Delhi.

“Before 26/11, we did not have anything more than general and non-specific information,” Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told reporters here.

“Whenever the US gets specific information about a terrorist attack against any of our friends we immediately act to share that information with the country that is affected,” US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake, who is here to firm up the agenda for US President Barack Obama’s November visit, told reporters here.

“And that is certainly the case with India where we have a deep interest in ensuring that there is not another attack such as the terrible one that occurred in Mumbai,” he said.

“If there is anything that has improved dramatically, it is the counter terrorism cooperation, and even before the Mumbai attacks we were doing a lot of exchanges of information about specific threats against India,” he stressed.

“I would want to reassure that whenever we have any specific info on any terrorist attack, wherever it is, especially against friends like India, we share that information on a real time basis, right away to make our friends have that info. That’s especially true of India,” he said in a separate interview with NDTV.

“I don’t want to get into specifics since it’s highly sensitive intelligence, but want to say again that whenever we have any kind of specific info, we share it,” he added.

A couple of days ago, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna had said India had received only “general and non-specific” information prior to the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. “Well, we had some general and non-specific information which we had received prior to the heinous Mumbai attack. But it was not so specific. It was by and large general,” Krishna told reporters here.

According to reports, two of the wives of American-Pakistan terror operative David Headley, who scouted targets for the Mumbai attacks, disclosed that they had passed on information about his links with LeT and his growing interest in India, but the FBI did not act on the tip-offs.

The US Tuesday admitted that one of Headley’s wives had twice warned the US embassy in Pakistan about her husband’s terrorist links, but denied the warnings were ignored.

Obama begins his four-day trip to India from Mumbai on the evening of Nov 6 and then heads to New Delhi next day for talks.