A terrorist connected with planning last week's suicide attack on India's parliament confessed on television yesterday to Pakistan's close involvement in the assault. This revelation, dismissed by Islamabad, has further raised tension between the two nuclear rivals who are mobilising their armies along their common border.
India had hinted at military strikes against militant training camps and bases inside Pakistan-administered Kashmir after the attack last week on parliament if its diplomatic and political offensive proved ineffective.
Mohammad Afzal told STAR News and Aaj Tak, the local Hindi channel, in separate interviews that all five attackers were Pakistani nationals, who were in regular touch with their "handlers" in the Inter Services Intelligence across the border until a day before last Thursday's attack.
Afzal, arrested two days after the attack, said the terrorists had planned on entering parliament to kill hundreds of MPs, including senior ministers, gathered inside. "They (the attackers) planned on annihilating India's political leadership," he said.
Thirteen people, including the five attackers, died in the assault that ended after an hour-long firefight in which eight security personnel were killed.
Police also claimed to have "incontrovertible" evidence about the involvement of Lashkar-e-Taibya (Army of the Pure) terrorist group based near the Pakistani border city of Lahore, in the attack on parliament.
The leader of the LeT, Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed, wants to unite Muslims across the world through "religious motivation". Scores of LeT members were also killed in the recent attack on Mazar-e-Sharif by the US-sponsored Northern Alliance in northern Afghanistan.
India, meanwhile, has categorically refused to share with Pakistan the evidence it has collected on the attack on its parliament, despite appeals from Washington to do so.
"We will share this evidence only with our friends and partners who are united in their determination to fight terrorism like Britain, France, Germany and the US," the foreign office spokeswoman, Ms Nirupma Rao, said. Pakistan's first responsibility is to comply with India's demarche to arrest leaders of LeT and to seize their assets, she added.
Islamabad strongly denied any involvement in the attack and offered to carry out a joint investigation with India into the incident. It also vowed to retaliate against any Indian military strike.
