Pakistan won’t get access to Kasab: India

MUMBAI: A Pakistani commission investigating the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai will visit in early February, but will not be allowed to interrogate the lone surviving gunman, Indian officials said Monday.

The visit is the result of intricate negotiations between the nuclear-armed neighbours, but is unlikely to resolve tensions over whether Pakistan is sincerely working to prosecute the attack’s alleged perpetrators.

Disagreements over access to gunman Ajmal Kasab, who has been sentenced to death in India for his role in the rampage that killed 166, have spilled into public view.

Pakistan’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, told India’s NDTV last week that Pakistani officials would like to speak with Kasab directly to verify his confession.

”It can be verified either by bringing Ajmal Kasab to Pakistan or the judicial commission goes and personally interviews the witnesses, including Ajmal Kasab,” he said. ”That’s what we have requested.”

Ira Joshi, a spokeswoman for India’s Ministry of Home Affairs, said Monday that such access was not part of the memorandum of understanding governing the visit.

In his confession before the court — which he later tried to retract — Kasab described in detail a network of training camps and safe houses across Pakistan, revealing the names of four men he said were his handlers.

India has accused Pakistani intelligence of being involved in the planning of the attack, and officials have complained that Pakistan is not acting vigorously enough to bring the alleged masterminds to justice.

Pakistan bristles at that criticism, noting that seven suspects in the Mumbai attack have been put on trial.

The Pakistani delegation will visit Mumbai in the first week of February and speak to doctors who did the post-mortems on the nine gunmen killed during the attack, as well as to the magistrate who recorded Kasab’s confession and the chief investigating officer of the attacks, an official at Mumbai’s high court said on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the visit.

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Posted in: INTERNATIONAL

Thirteen killed in Afghan violence

KABUL: At least 13 people, including five Afghan border police, a Nato soldier and two would-be suicide bombers were killed across Afghanistan Saturday, officials said.

The border guards died when their vehicle was ambushed in Gulran district of Hirat province in western Afghanistan, General Sulaiman, the commander of rapid reaction forces in the area, told AFP.

“The vehicle first hit a roadside bomb and then the militants opened fire using grenade launchers and small arms,” he said.

The Nato soldier died in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force said, without providing any further details.

Also on Saturday, a roadside bomb hit a civilian truck in Lashkar Gah, the capital city of volatile Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, killing three civilians and wounding three others.

“They were labours going to their work in the morning when their truck hit the roadside bomb that killed three and wounded three others,” the provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi said.

In southeastern Afghanistan, Afghan and Nato security forces shot dead four attackers attempting to target Barmal district chief office in Paktika province on Saturday, Mukhlis Afghan the provincial spokesman said.

“Two attackers had suicide vests on, but were killed before being able to detonate and two others were armed,” he said, adding that there were no other fatalities.

The east and southeastern regions of Afghanistan have been the focus of US-led coalition efforts recently, shifting from Taliban strongholds in the south towards the restive area along the border with Pakistan.

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Posted in: INTERNATIONAL

Blast kills 11 on bus in Syria, clashes elsewhere

BEIRUT: An explosion killed at least 11 people on a minibus carrying prisoners in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib on Saturday, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The British-based group, which monitors a 10-month-old uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, gave no further details. No independent confirmation was available.

In other violence, heavy fighting broke out between the Syrian army and soldiers who have defected to join anti-Assad insurgents in an area near the border with Turkey, Al Jazeera television reported.

It gave no further details of the clashes which it said were in the city of Jisr al-Shughour.

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Posted in: INTERNATIONAL