Pakistan warns that if tension with India escalates in the wake of the Nov. 26-29 Mumbai terrorist attack, it would move troops from its western frontier with Afghanistan, where security forces are battling Taliban and al-Qaida fighters as part of the U.S.-led war on terror, to the Indian border.
Tensions High Between India and Pakistan After Attacks
By Rina Chandran
November 30, 2008
MUMBAIÂ — The fallout from a three-day rampage that killed nearly 200 people in Mumbai threatened on Sunday to unravel India’s improving ties with Pakistan and prompted the resignation of India’s security minister.
New Delhi said it was raising security to a “war level” and had no doubt of a Pakistani link to the attacks, which unleashed anger at home over the intelligence failure and the delayed response to the violence that paralyzed India’s financial capital.
Officials in Islamabad have warned any escalation would force it to divert troops to the Indian border and away from a U.S.-led anti-militant campaign on the Afghan frontier. …
Indian officials have said most, if not all, of the 10 Islamist attackers who held Mumbai hostage came from Pakistan.
The tension between the nuclear rivals has raised the prospect of a breakdown of peace efforts going on since 2004. The two nations have fought three wars since 1947, when Muslim Pakistan was carved out of Hindu-majority India.
They went to the brink of a fourth conflict after a 2001 militant attack on the Indian parliament which New Delhi also blamed on Pakistan.
“We will increase security and strengthen it at a war level like we have never done it before,” Sriprakash Jaiswal, India’s minister of state for home affairs, told Reuters on Sunday.
“They can say what they want, but we have no doubt that the terrorists had come from Pakistan,” Jaiswal said.
An official in Islamabad said the next one to two days would be crucial for relations. Pakistan has condemned the assaults and denied any involvement by state agencies. …
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1/14/10 Update: Related story
U.S. terror suspects indicted in Mumbai attack (AP, Jan. 14, 2010) — Two Chicago men were indicted Thursday on charges they planned a violent attack on a Danish newspaper and helped lay the groundwork for the November 2008 terrorist rampage that killed 166 people in the Indian city of Mumbai. David Coleman Headley [formerly named Daood Gilani] and businessman Tahawwur Hussain Rana were named in a 12-count superseding indictment that for the first time alleged Rana was in on the planning of the attacks by a team of 10 terrorists. Headley, 49, an American citizen, and Rana, 49, a Canadian national who has been in business in Chicago for more than a dozen years, are both in federal custody in Chicago. … Full story
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IRAQ UPDATE
Iraq’s Sistani Has Concerns About U.S. Pact
November 29, 2008
NAJAF, Iraq — Iraq’s influential Shi’ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has reservations about a pact allowing U.S. troops to stay for three more years, but politicians must decide its value, a source said on Saturday. …
The revered cleric’s acceptance of the pact is crucial for it to be accepted by Iraq’s mostly Shi’ite population, many of whom are at best ambivalent about the continuing presence of U.S. troops on their soil.
“In this agreement there are unsatisfactory things. … Therefore he declares his reservations. His reservations do not mean rejection, but neither does that mean absolute acceptance,” a source close to Sistani’s office told Reuters.
Sistani had signalled the week before the vote that he would abstain from judging the pact and leave it to lawmakers to decide its fate, on two conditions: that it does not violate Iraq’s sovereignty and that it gets consensus from all of its communities. Shi’ites have eagerly awaited his final verdict. …
The pact replaces an expiring U.N. mandate and gives Iraq authority over about 150,000 U.S. troops in the country.
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Following are security developments in Iraq on Nov. 29, 2008, as reported by Reuters.
BAGHDAD – Rocket or mortar attacks killed at least two foreign workers on Saturday near the United Nations offices inside the Green Zone, a U.N. official and police said. A Green Zone security source said two rocket or mortar attacks killed three foreign workers and wounded 15 other people.
BAGHDAD – U.S. forces killed four suspected al-Qaeda militants and arrested seven in an operation in Tuz Khurmato,105 miles north of Baghdad, on Friday and Saturday, a U.S. military statement said.
KUT – A rocket attack killed a child and wounded two women from the same family in the al-Zahraa residential area of central Kut, 95 miles southeast of Baghdad, on Friday, police said.
BAGHDAD – A suicide car bomber killed two people and wounded 14 others in central Baghdad on Friday, police said.
BAGHDAD – U.S. forces captured a key member of the Iraqi militia group the Hezbollah Brigade, killing two of his associates and arresting three others in a raid early Friday in Baghdad’s south central Karrada district, the U.S. military said.
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