With the stage set for a meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh, India has said it will ask its neighbour to address the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack that left 166 people dead. In a statement to the media, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said, “The work that we have done on this meeting (between Singh and Sharif) includes conveying that there would be accountability for 26/11 and the people who were involved in planning and executing the attack would be held accountable”. Khurshid voiced caution and said that 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 obviously would be too much to expect but we are hoping there is movement on issues that are of great importance both to the government and people of our country,” said Khurshid. 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 by Pakistan to appoint a new prosecutor to replace late Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) as a “good signal”.
