Post-dossier scenario

By S.M. Hali submitted 14 hours 54 minutes ago

Pakistan's official response to the Indian dossier, delivered to India's high commissioner in Islamabad on February 12, acknowledges that part of the Mumbai terrorist attack was planned in Pakistan. The verification by Islamabad of the material supplied by India took them by surprise as they were not expecting such a candid admission by the Pakistani advisor on Internal Affairs, Mr Rehman Malik.

It should not, however have come as a surprise, since The Economist of February 5, 2009, in its Op-Ed Getting serious in Pakistan had predicted: "Unusually, Pakistan may be about to give the world a pleasant surprise. Speaking to The Economist, a senior Pakistani official reinforced a recent impression that Pakistan has at last launched a serious investigation into last November's devastating terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which India and Western governments have blamed on a banned Pakistani Islamist militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET).

The official said that Pakistani investigators had found new evidence to substantiate claims made in a dossier provided to them by India last month. India - as well as America and Britain - claims that the commando-style attacks on two hotels, a railway station and a Jewish centre in southern Mumbai, which lasted for three days and claimed over 170 lives, was plotted in Pakistan and launched from there."Indian reaction has been rather niggardly. Its Minister for External Affairs, Shri Parnab Mukherjee in his address to the Indian Lok Sabha responding to the Pakistani dossier, went into a Shakespearean diatribe blaming Pakistan of: "Prevarication, denial, diversionary tactics and a misplaced sense of victimhood."

Come on Mr Mukherjee, Pakistan has suffered over 6,000 casualties through terror attacks, over 1600 of them have been members of the army. Pakistan has lost its popular political leader, former PM Benazir Bhutto, an MPA and numerous other political leaders and yet we are being accused of a "misplaced sense of victimhood." Asian Age, in its editorial of February 15, 2009, India needs whole truth from Pakistan, echos similar sentiments: "The Pakistan view on the Mumbai attack, which for India is a game-changer, is that the attack was only 'partly' planned in Pakistan.

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