Pakistan should act on Headley’s revealations, PM tells Obama
By Gurmukh Singh, IANSMonday, June 28, 2010
TORONTO - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has told US President Barack Obama that Pakistan should to act on information provided by Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Coleman Headley in order to stop anti-India terrorist activities from its soil.
Raising the issue during his meeting Sunday with Obama on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit, the prime minister said Pakistan should show its commitment to stopping anti-Indian terrorist activities to promote dialogue between the two neighbours.
“They spoke about the ongoing interrogations about the activities of David Coleman Headley and said that both India and the US have mutual interest that information that is coming out of this interrogation is taken seriously by Pakistan with a view to controlling and eliminating terrorist elements on its territory,” Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told media persons here.
The talks between Manmohan Singh and Obama took place two days after India’s Home Minister P. Chidambaram took up with his Pakistani counterpart New Delhi’s continuing concerns over terror emanating from the Pakistani territory.
Headley, who changed his given name of Daood Gilani in 2006, is now in US custody and has confessed to his role in inspecting sites for the 26/11 Mumbai attack during questioning by a four-member team from India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA).
He had pleaded guilty March 18 in a Chicago court to 12 federal terror charges, admitting that he participated in planning the November 26-29, 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, as well as later planning to attack a Danish newspaper.
The US president lauded India’s initiative, including the talks in Thimphu, to promote dialogue with Pakistan, Rao said.
When Rao’s attention was drawn to a statement by Pakistan’s interior minister about the inability of the two countries to stop the activities of the likes of alleged 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed, she said these activities should be stopped if the dialogue is to succeed.
She said the two leaders discussed the situation in South Asian and stressed the need to “stabilise the situation in Afghanistan”.
Rao denied that the issue of extraditing former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson to India came up during the meeting. “No, it didn’t figure in the talks with Obama,” she said.
Anderson has been named a proclaimed offender in the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy case. Earlier this month, a Bhopal court convicted seven Union Carbide India executives for criminal neglect in the tragedy - the world’s worst industrial disaster that killed thousands and left several thousand others maimed.
With public outrage mounting over the Bhopal gas verdict which was widely seen as inadequate, the Group of Ministers on the Bhopal gas tragedy in India recently decided to renew efforts afresh for the extradition of Anderson.
The US had earlier turned down the request for Anderson’s extradition when it was last made in 2008.
The fact that Anderson had visited India soon after the Dec 2-3, 1984 disaster and was given safe passage back home has led to a raging controversy.
