Islamabad: Pakistan confirmed on Wednesday the arrest of two men named by India as planners of the terrorist attack on Mumbai, but a senior Indian official described Pakistani actions so far as "eyewash".
Two operations commanders with the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist group, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Zarrar Shah were being held, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told journalists in Multan city.
"They have been detained for investigation," he said, providing the first official confirmation since Lakhvi's arrest in a raid on a Lashkar camp in Pakistan occupied Kashmir on Sunday.
India has put the official death toll in the Mumbai terror attack at 179, and public anger with Pakistan is running high.
The United States has engaged in intensive diplomacy to stop tensions mounting between India and Pakistan and to keep Islamabad focused on fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda threat on its border with Afghanistan.
While other media have reported up to 40 people had been arrested, Pakistani intelligence officials told Reuters only around a dozen people have been detained, mostly in the raid on a camp outside Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan occupied Kashmir.
Pakistan military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said an operation against banned terrorist organisations remained underway, and was being carried out in several places.
The prime minister said he had no up-to-date information on whether Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist group, was also detained, as some media have reported.
SKEPTICISM ABOUNDS
Pakistan has been advised by the United States to take swift, transparent action to cooperate with India in the investigation into the slaughter in India's financial capital.
Islamabad, however, has said anyone arrested and accused of involvement in the Mumbai attack will be tried in Pakistan.
Skepticism abounds in India over the sincerity of Pakistan's actions because of alleged past ties between the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and groups like Lashkar and Jaish that had fought Indian rule in Kashmir.
"This is an eyewash. We want action that meets our concern," a senior Indian government official, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters.
"There is no modicum of doubt about the complicity of elements of Pakistan, including the ISI," the official said.
A Pakistani daily, The News, reported on Tuesday there were also arrests made and records seized during raids on offices of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) charity in the Mansehra and Chakdra districts of North West Frontier Province.
The charity, which has thousands of followers, is widely regarded as a front for Lashkar-e-Toiba. India has asked the UN Security Council to add JuD to a UN terrorist list.
Pakistan has kept the charity on a watch list after banning both Lashkar and Jaish in 2001, when their raid on the Indian Parliament almost caused a fourth war with India.
MORE SUICIDE SQUADS OUT THERE?
Having interrogated one gunman caught alive, Indian police have released names and photographs of the nine shot dead in the three-day assault, and revealed where they came from in Pakistan.
They were part of a group of 30 trained for suicide missions, a top police officer said. "The other 20 were trained to carry out other missions. They did not come to India, they must have gone elsewhere," Deven Bharti, a deputy police commissioner, told Reuters on Wednesday.
Investigations into possible links with home-grown Indian Islamic terrorists have focused on five suspects. Police were following up leads related to two Indian Muslims caught in northern India in February.
One had maps of Mumbai that highlighted several city landmarks hit in the attack. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said there was no doubt the militants behind the attack operated from Pakistan.
Neither Azhar nor his Jaish group have been mentioned as suspects in the attack on Mumbai. But Azhar is one of the most-wanted men in India, and was on a list of 20 terrorists and criminals New Delhi asked Pakistan to hand over in the wake of the attacks to show its cooperation.
Representatives of the Azhar family and intelligence officials told Reuters on Tuesday that media reports the jihadi leader was under house arrest were incorrect.
Confusion over his status was sown by Pakistan's Defence Minister Chaudhry Mukhtar Ahmed in comments to CNN-IBN and a report in The News daily.
Chaudhry told Reuters he had not been confirming anyone's arrest, but merely repeating names already carried in the media.
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