Mumbai Attacks Linked to Pakistan Militants, U.S. Official Says

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- There are strong indications the Mumbai attackers who killed 195 people are linked to a Pakistan- based group of Islamist militants seeking to drive India out of divided Kashmir, a U.S. counterterrorism official said.

The official, who asked not to be identified, cautioned that the investigation is in the early stages. The only surviving attacker told Indian police that a senior member of the Pakistani group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, planned last week’s assaults, and a satellite phone the terrorists left behind was used to call five Lashkar leaders, the Wall Street Journal reported.

India has ruled out military retaliation against Pakistan after the attacks and asked its neighbor to extradite 20 people suspected of involvement in terrorism, including the alleged mastermind of the rampage.

“No one is talking about military action,” Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in New Delhi yesterday. In a diplomatic protest note, India asked “for the handover of those persons who are settled in Pakistan and are fugitives as per Indian law,” he said.

India and Pakistan are seeking to keep tension over the attacks from undermining five years of peace talks. The talks began in 2003 after the neighbors came to the brink of a fourth war. India blamed the attacks on “elements” in Pakistan and this week told Pakistan to match pledges of cooperation with action.

‘Atmosphere of Restraint’

“There is an atmosphere of restraint from both sides,” said Prashant Dikshit, an independent security analyst formerly with the Institute of Peace & Conflict Studies in New Delhi. “Both countries realize that breaking the peace process they have started five years ago will not be a sensible thing to do.”

The gunmen came from Karachi in what “appeared” to be a suicide mission with no plans to return, the chief of Mumbai police told reporters yesterday.

The attackers split into five groups of two and hired five taxicabs to get to their targets before blowing up two of the vehicles, Hassan Gafoor said in a televised press conference. The terrorist caught by the police admitted he was from Pakistan, Gafoor said.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has promised full cooperation in investigating any role by his countrymen in last week’s terrorist attack in Mumbai. His military and intelligence agencies may be less accommodating.

Pakistani Intelligence

An investigation of Lashkar may lead to the Pakistan army’s main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, because the ISI gave money and direction to the Islamist group as it conducted attacks in India in the 1990s, according to Husain Haqqani, a Boston University professor who is now Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington.

Information on a possible waterborne attack on Mumbai was passed to India by the Bush administration, according to an unidentified official cited by the Associated Press. The official wouldn’t provide details on the warning or its timing, AP said.

The assault on two luxury hotel complexes, a cafe, a railway station and a Jewish center ended on Nov. 29.

Ajmal Amir Kasab, the surviving terrorist, told interrogators that 24 people were trained in Pakistan over the course of a year, 10 of whom were picked for the Mumbai operation, the Times of India reported, citing unidentified people.

Names and Numbers

The names and numbers of five senior Lashkar leaders were in a satellite phone the terrorists left on a fishing vessel they used in the assault, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unidentified senior Mumbai police official. The U.S. has designated the group a terrorist organization.

Calls to the five men, including Yusuf Muzammil, the Kashmiri group’s head of terrorism operations against India, had been made on the phone, the newspaper said. Kasab identified Muzammil as the assaults’ mastermind, the police official said, according to the Journal.

India has a list of 20 wanted people, which is “sometimes altered,” Mukherjee said. “We have renewed it” in a diplomatic note of protest, he said.

Those sought for extradition include underworld gang leader Dawood Ibrahim, wanted for 1993 Mumbai terrorist attacks, and Maulana Masood Azhar, head of the Jaish-e-Muhammad Muslim extremist group, which has attacked India in the past. Yusuf Muzammil is also on the list, the Wall Street Journal said.

High Commissioner Summoned

Pakistani High Commissioner Shahid Malik was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in New Delhi and told that India is also seeking the destruction of militant training camps in the part of Kashmir controlled by its neighbor, an Indian Foreign Ministry official said yesterday on condition of anonymity.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Nov. 27 said India will “go after” individuals and organizations behind the assault. Zardari said his government will act, provided there’s evidence.

India, while observing restraint, will also try and maintain the pressure on its neighbor to placate voters before elections that must be held by May.

Pakistan has offered to carry out a joint investigation with India, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in televised comments yesterday. He said Pakistan wants good relations with India and that this isn’t the time for “finger- pointing.”

The two countries have fought two of their three wars since 1947 over the Kashmir region, which is divided between them and claimed in full by both countries. India has blamed Pakistan for supporting a violent separatist movement since 1989 that has led to 50,000 deaths in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The two nations built up troops on the border following a series of terrorist attacks that India said were backed by Pakistan and came to the verge of war in 2002, before tensions eased and talks began the next year.