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ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday rejected Indian allegations Pakistani spies were involved in bomb attacks that killed more than 180 people in Mumbai in July, saying Pakistan opposed terrorism.
Mumbai police have accused the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group banned by Pakistan, of conspiring with Indian militants to carry out the attacks on the rail network in India's financial hub.
“We are against terrorism and the Mumbai blast is a terrorist act. There is no doubt in my mind and there is no doubt in the ISI's mind,” Musharraf told a news conference.
“Any bombings whether it is … on the Indian parliament or in Mumbai are terrorist acts,” Musharraf said, referring to an attack on parliament in New Delhi in December 2001 that almost resulted in a fourth war between the South Asian rivals.
The Indian government has said it will show evidence of Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai attacks on July 11.
At a meeting on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Cuba last month, Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to resume a peace process after India had called off talks following the Mumbai attacks.
They also agreed to set up a mechanism through which their security agencies could share information to counter terrorism in the region.
The ISI and India's intelligence agency have been at each others throats for decades, and Musharraf said the two governments still had to agree on ways of cooperating.
“The intelligence agencies have been playing adversaries … We must stop that,” said Musharraf.
“We must cooperate against terrorism whether it is in India or Pakistan.”
Musharraf said Singh had agreed to visit Pakistan if there was something substantive that could be agreed.
He said territorial disputes over the Siachen Glacier in northern Kashmir that has been the world's highest battlefield and Sir Creek, an estuary flowing into the Arabian Sea, could be settled quickly if there was the political will.
Pakistan is frustrated by India's failure to move faster on addressing core disputes over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir that has been the cause of two wars.
“We should move forward on Kashmir, and we can only move forward if we both step backward, because that will lead to a compromise,” said Musharraf.
