With the stage set for a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Nawaz Sharif, India has said it will ask its neighbour to provide accountability for the 26/11 terror attack that left 166 people dead.
“The work that we have done on this meeting (between Singh and Sharif) includes conveying the expectation of some signal, addressing our concerns, which essentially are accountability for 26/11, people who are involved in planning and executing, who happen to be either in the custody of Pakistan or on their soil. We are looking for accountability,” External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid stated.
He, however, voiced caution and said the meeting between the two Prime Ministers should not be expected to address all issues and concerns.
“For us to expect that we will get complete satisfaction in one meeting would obviously be too much but we are expecting, hoping and really we deserve some kind of progress on issues that are of great importance both to the government and people of our country,” he said yesterday.
Khurshid said India has facilitated the visit of an eight-member Pakistani judicial commission which will cross examine Indian witnesses and it expects that the evidence collected would now be admissible in Pakistani courts.
He also described the decision to appoint a new prosecutor to replace late Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, who was assassinated by militants in May, as a “good signal.”
“We hope that this will be an appropriate impetus for the matter to proceed with expedition because it is very important,” he said.
Khurshid, however, said that still lots need to be done to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage to justice.
“This is a beginning. There is no reason why the case cannot proceed more effectively. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Many steps are yet to be taken.”
Singh is also expected to convey concerns over continued terrorism emanating from Pakistan to Sharif.
