Pak rejects as 'baseless' Menon's comments on Headley links

Rezaul H Laskar
Islamabad, Jul 20 (PTI) Pakistan Tuesday dismissed as
"baseless accusations" Indian National Security Advisor
Shivshankar Menon's remarks that David Headley was linked to
the Pakistani establishment and intelligence agencies.
Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit "strongly refuted"
Menon's comments about links between Pakistan's establishment
and Pakistani-American Headley, who conducted surveillance of
sites targeted during the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Basit said Menon's "baseless accusations were yet another
manifestation of the Indian establishment's propagandistic
stance toward Pakistan."
In a statement, Basit further said Menon's comments were
"entirely inconsistent with the understanding reached between
the leadership of the two countries" during a meeting on the
sidelines of the SAARC summit in Bhutan that "terrorism was a
common threat which needed to be addressed in a cooperative
manner."
Menon has indicated that clear links between the
Pakistani establishment and Headley were established during
the Pakistan-American's recent interrogation by Indian
investigators.
"For us, it's been brought home most recently by what we
learnt from Headley, which confirms many of the things which
we knew before. And it's really the links between the official
establishment and with existing intelligence agencies, it's
that nexus, which makes it a much harder phenomenon for us to
deal with," he said.
"Unfortunately what we know and what we see suggests that
these links or this nexus, in fact, will not be broken soon.
If anything, it is getting stronger," he added.
The National Security Advisor's remarks follow Indian
Home Secretary G K Pillai's comments that Pakistan's ISI had
planned and coordinated the Mumbai attacks that killed 166
people in November 2008.
Pillai's comments were made on the eve of a meeting of
the Foreign Ministers of India and Pakistan on July 15 and
created a storm in Islamabad. PTI RHL
MYR