New Delhi - Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit in an interview aired on Thursday said that both Pakistan and India made mistakes after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and his country was keen to avoid those mistakes with the Pathankot attack investigation.
“If the Pakistani team gets proper evidence, I’m confident Masood Azhar will not meet same fate as Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi,” he told CNN-IBN in an exclusive interview.
He added “Pakistan will probe the Pathankot attack after India completes the probe.” The decision of the two countries to not discontinue talks after the Pathankot attack was a positive decision, he said. In fact, Basit also said that foreign secretary-level talks may happen in the first fortnight of February.
Basit confirmed that Azhar’s organisation, Jaish-e-Mohammed, which was allegedly behind the attack in Pathankot, was banned in Pakistan in 2002 and their activities were being curtailed even now. “No individual or terror organisation will be spared, I can assure you that,” he said. Basit discussed the issue of Osama bin Laden finding refuge in Pakistan, stating, “It was as much a failure of the CIA as it was of ISI.”
Meanwhile, Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that both sides were trying to fix up a mutually convenient date for secretary-level talks.
A fortnight after the MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup announced that the two foreign secretaries would meet “very near in the future”, he said to persistent queries Thursday that he had “just spoken to the foreign secretary and no dates have emerged that is convenient”. Swarup said that both foreign secretaries – India’s S Jaishankar and Pakistan’s Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry – have to agree on a mutually-convenient date. To Pakistan foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz’s comment that the ball is in India’s court with regard to the talks, Swarup reiterated that when the two foreign secretaries agree on a mutually-convenient date, “we will let you know”.
He said that when External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Islamabad last December, both sides agreed that the foreign secretaries would meet to discuss the modalities of the resumed dialogue. “But Pathankot intervened”, he said, adding when Jaishankar and Chaudhry meet they will take up the Pathankot attack.
On the progress in Pakistan’s probe into the Pathankot attack, the official said that India and Pakistan are continuously in touch regarding investigations into the attack.
To reports that a Pakistani court has dismissed the government’s petition seeking voice samples of 26/11 mastermind Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi and six other suspects in the case, the spokesperson said that India has not been informed through official channels. He reiterated that India views the Mumbai attacks trial as a “test of Pakistan’s sincerity in tackling terror against India”.