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Pakistan signatory to anti-terror convention

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s contention that it does not have an extradition treaty with India to hand over possible suspects in the Mumbai terror attacks does not hold water, say diplomatic observers, as it is a signatory to international conventions that demand that states either prosecute terror suspects or extradite them to the country that wants to try them.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in an interview that Pakistan would not extradite any of its nationals suspected of involvement in the Mumbai attack as there was no extradition treaty with India.

If any such person was found in Pakistan, the Minister said, he would be tried under Pakistani laws.

The Dawn newspaper, which recently reported that the U.S. was putting pressure on Pakistan to extradite Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, said on Friday that the Bush administration has had a change of mind, and wants Pakistan to prosecute those found involved in the Mumbai attacks under its own laws “with sufficient efforts to ensure conviction.”

The newspaper said the U.S. had realised that extraditing suspects to India could have a fall-out with unpredictable consequences for the Zardari government.

The report went on to link the change in U.S. stand with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s remark that U.S. pressure on Pakistan had not produced “tangible results.”

The Indian position, as articulated by Indian High Commissioner Satyabrata Pal during his meeting with the Pakistan Foreign Secretary last week, has two elements: the Pakistan government must take certain “judicial” steps to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai outrage to justice, that is prosecute the suspects; and initiate “executive” action to prevent such incidents from happening again, which would include dismantling what India calls the “terror infrastructure” in Pakistan.

It was Pakistan’s “sovereign decision,” said diplomatic observers who cannot be named, whether or not to accede to India’s demand for extradition of the suspects so that they could face Indian justice, as expressed by Mr. Mukherjee.

But Pakistan could not duck this demand by citing the absence of an extradition treaty, the observers said.

Pakistan is signatory to more than a dozen international conventions that obligate parties to “prosecute or extradite” terror suspects, irrespective of arrangements or the absence of such arrangements with individual countries.

“The draft of anti-terror U.N. Security Council resolutions since 1999 also reinforce the principle of “prosecute or extradite.”

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