WASHINGTON: Ahead of her visit to India in the aftermath of terror attacks in Mumbai, the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has asked the Pakistani government to fully cooperate in the ongoing investigations into the audacious strikes in India's commercial capital.
At a Round Table in London, Rice refused to speculate on how the government of India will respond but said that it is "incumbent" on Pakistan to realize the seriousness of what has happened. "...I'm not going to speculate on what the Indian government may choose to do. But the question is: How do you best deal with the fact of the attack, the consequences of it, and prevention of future attacks? And the best way to deal with that would be through cooperation between Pakistan and India, and that's what we are encouraging.
And in fact, this is a time for absolute transparency and for letting evidence lead where it may," Rice said in a media interaction. Responding to a query on the possibility of Pakistan's cooperation in the probe, the top State Department official said, "It depends on what actually did happen here. But it also is incumbent upon Pakistan to realize the seriousness of what happened here. First of all, let's remember that this isn't the first attack.
"Bad things happened in Afghanistan, to India as well. Secondly, this attack was broad and pretty brazen. And it clearly was meant to target not just not just to terrorize, but in fact, going as it did after Mumbai, an Indian financial centre, hotels that foreigners frequented, to try and shake the confidence of the international community and the safety of India," Rice said. "... This is a discussion that we have quite often with other countries about how we can deal with the terrorist phenomenon around the world.
And so we do work with the United Nations. We work with the European Union, with other players to try to see what we can do to stamp out extremism. "It's not easy. It takes a coordinated effort to do this, and we'll continue to work with them. But I don't think we have focused, right at this point, on any specific plan," he said in response to a question.
"But it's something that we're very concerned about, and the events in Mumbai are another example of why we have to all coordinate and work hard together to fight terrorism," he added.
Print
Top
