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WORLD> Asia-Pacific
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Bombs found in Mumbai train station a week later
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-04 08:19 Defense Ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar said the moves were a precaution and not based on concrete intelligence. "We saw how they came through the sea routes," Kar said. "We are not ruling out any threats. It's a preventive measure." Senior Bush administration officials and a foreign government official said Washington had advised India that a waterborne attack on Mumbai appeared to be in the works, and that Westerners and Israelis might be targeted. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of intelligence information. The officials would not elaborate on details of the US warning. However, they said the warning information was too general for India to take immediate action. Early Thursday, media reports said airports were put on high alert following intelligence warnings that terrorists were planning attacks on an airport in the next few days. The Press Trust of India news agency, quoting unidentified sources, said "specific" information regarding planned attacks had been received. Phones at police headquarters and the New Delhi airport rang unanswered late Wednesday. Analysts said the army had told the government that a large deployment of troops, like that which followed a 2001 attack on India's parliament, was not possible at present. "The three services chiefs told the government four days ago that a full military deployment will not be a feasible option," said Rahul Bedi, a South Asia expert with the London-based Jane's Defense Weekly. After the 2001 attack, India and Pakistan posted nearly 1 million soldiers along their border in a yearlong standoff. Bedi said the army was reluctant to repeat that without a clear political objective spelled out by the government. The two nations have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, and neither government wants a fourth. Both now have nuclear weapons. India fears the consequences of war on the huge economic gains it has made recently, while Pakistan has its own conflict with Islamic militants on the Afghan border. Nevertheless, Mukherjee said India was now waiting for Pakistan. "What action will be taken by (the Indian) government will depend on the response that we have from the Pakistan authorities," he said. India has called on Pakistan to turn over 20 people who are "fugitives of Indian law" and wanted for questioning, but Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said the suspects would be tried in Pakistan if there is evidence of wrongdoing. "At the moment, these are just names of individuals -- no proof and no investigation," he told CNN. "If we had the proof, we would try them in our courts and we would try them in our land and we would sentence them." Much of the evidence that Pakistanis were behind the attack comes from the interrogation of the surviving gunman, who told police that he and the other nine attackers had trained for months in camps in Pakistan operated by the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Ajmal Amir Kasab, 21, told investigators his recruiters promised to pay his family from an impoverished village Pakistan's Punjab region $1,250 when he became a martyr. Kasab said he and the other gunmen were "hand-picked" for the mission and trained for more than a year by Lashkar-e-Taiba, based in Kashmir, according to two senior officials involved in the investigation. Kasab gave a detailed account of how he and another gunman roamed the train station and shot passengers, killed several police officers, and planted a bomb in a taxi, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media about the investigation. |
