China today said it will adopt an “unbiased” approach to back any Indian move for a United Nations ban on Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad blamed for the Pathankot airbase attack, months after blocking India’s demand for action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba at the world body. The offices of the organization are also being traced and sealed.
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After the January 2 Pathankot airbase attack, New Delhi said it had provided Islamabad with intelligence information to take action against the perpetrators who allegedly belonged to Pakistan. JD-U’s K C Tyagi welcomed this step of Pakistan and said India had submitted dossiers against terror outfits operating from their soil in past many times including after the 26/11 attack and the attack on Indian Parliament.
News of the arrests, given in a statement by the Prime Minister’s Office, comes 48 hours before a rare meeting of foreign secretaries of the two countries is tentatively scheduled to take place.
Referring to the telephonic call made by US Secretary of State John Kerry to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Saturday, the spokesman said the two leaders talked about the need to stay focused on terrorism not just in Pakistan but in the region.
Although Pakistan has yesterday hinted that the foreign-secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan may be defered, Musharraf said during the interview, “India can not threaten us by putting conditions ahead of such interactive sessions”. “Further investigations are underway”, the Pakistan government said. Pakistani authorities have not revealed the names of those arrested as they believe that disclosure of their identities would harm investigations.
The statement was issued moments after a Kashmiri separatists’ alliance, the UJC, claimed responsibility for the Pathankot attack, though the Indian media asserted that the assailants belonged to out-law faction Jaish-e-Muhammad. He also praised the Pathankot terror attack.
“There is no reason to distrust (avishvaas) them (Pakistan) so early”, he said.
“Reports suggest a number of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries consider the intelligence supplied (including mobile phone conversations between the attackers and suspected handlers in Pakistan, a Jaish-e-Mohammad letter, DNA samples of the attackers, their voice record samples) to be credible leads if not conclusive evidence”.
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Security analyst Talat Masood said the suggestion Pakistan could send a team shows Islamabad was making a “genuine and sincere” effort to find out who was responsible, and “wants to fully cooperate with India”.
