ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said on Friday that by reiterating the demand for the deportation of Dawood Ibrahim and the arrest and handover of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin, India had shown it had no fresh evidence to substantiate its charges against Islamabad in the Mumbai blasts.

The Foreign Ministry said Islamabad had informed the Indian Government at the time the names were given that they "are either not in Pakistan or [are] associated with the Kashmiri freedom struggle, including the chief of a well-known Kashmiri political party that has representation and offices in Jammu and Kashmir as well as in Europe and the United States."

Islamabad was responding to New Delhi's statement that President Pervez Musharraf's offer of cooperation in the investigation was meaningless as Pakistan had yet to arrest Ibrahim, Mumbai underworld don, or Salauddin despite evidence provided by India.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said the names were included in a list of most wanted persons that India exchanged every year with Pakistan at the Interior/Home secretaries' talks in the composite dialogue process since 2004.

Charges refuted

"To link these lists... to our serious offer to help with investigations of Mumbai terrorist attack establishes the paucity of substance in Indian allegations," it said.

According to the statement, which described the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson's remarks as a "rehash of baseless allegation," New Delhi was yet to take action on Islamabad's evidence of terrorist infrastructure targeting Pakistan on Indian soil.

No credence

The statement said repeating the conjectures and allegations about training camps and terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) would not give the allegations any credence.

"The fact that there is no terrorist infrastructure in Azad Kashmir became fully known to the international community with the opening of the entire area along the LoC to international NGOs and relief teams as well as NATO and other foreign contingents after the October earthquake," the statement added.

It said that on earlier occasions similar Indian accusations were proved wrong by independent enquiries such as in the case of Chittisinghpura incident of March 2000 and the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, which exposed "involvement of elements internal to India."

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