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  • PAKISTAN: Pakistan dismayed at postponement of India talks saying the peace process should not be linked to the bomb attacks in Mumbai

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PAKISTAN: Pakistan dismayed at postponement of India talks saying the peace process should not be linked to the bomb attacks in Mumbai

Pakistan expressed dismay on Monday (July 17) over India's decision to put off talks due to start this week, saying the peace process should not be linked to the bomb attacks in Mumbai. The foreign secretaries of both sides had been due to meet in New Delhi on Thursday (JULY 20) to review a 2 ½ year-old peace process, but India decided the timing was wrong after blasts on commuter trains killed 181 people and wounded hundreds in Mumbai last week. "We look at this postponement as a negative development and the linkage between this postponement and the terrorist attacks in Mumbai as incongruous and out of place," Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan told a news conference. Khan said talks between the two countries, which have fought three wars since independence from British colonial rule in 1947, "must be sustained". Although there has been no breakthrough yet in investigations into the Mumbai attacks, Indian suspicions have fallen on Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, and the Pakistani military spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. Pakistan has condemned the attacks on India's financial and commercial hub and offered full cooperation with any Indian investigation. Khan said India had not yet provided any information about the involvement of any Pakistani group in the attacks, despite Pakistan's offer to cooperate with any Indian investigation. "I should say that there ought to be no room for unsubstantiated allegations. If there is any solid information, if there is any concrete evidence, it should be shared with us," Khan said. "You must have already seen - and this is a standing offer in the context of our being part of (the) international coalition against terrorism - that we would help with investigations if there is any information or evidence which is provided to us," he added.

ITN Source | July 18, 2006Watch more videos from ITN Source

Tags:. .attacks. .trains. .thursday. .since. .room











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