Days after it provided access to Pakistani-American LeT operative David Headley, the US has said Indian government would have been “very pleased” with the cooperation it had offered in the case but the country’s media appeared frustrated by the “delay” in the process.
“In the Headley case, I know the people in the press have been -- particularly in India -- a bit frustrated by the delay,” Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake said in response to a question at a State Department blog forum.
However, Mr. Blake said the Indian government does not share the same opinion and is in fact satisfied with the cooperation.
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He said as National Security Adviser James Jones confirmed over the weekend, an Indian team has been given access to Headley now.
“I think the Indian government would say that they’ve been very pleased with the cooperation that they’ve had with us,” he said.
Some media reports had said that the recent Indo-US Strategic Dialogue had been overshadowed by the issue of access to Headley which took a long time.
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“Obviously, we had to work through Mr Headley’s lawyers and so there was a great deal of work that had to be done to ensure that there could be a productive discussion, and that’s now taken place,” Mr. Blake said.
Mr. Blake said counter-terrorism cooperation between the US and India has really been one of the new strengths of the relationship and has increased quite dramatically since the terrible Mumbai attacks in November of 2008.
“Since then, we’ve seen quite close intelligence and also law enforcement cooperation. We have a new counter-terrorism cooperation initiative.”
He said the two countries are looking at new cooperation in the areas of cyber-security, which would benefit both.
Mr. Blake said the Headley case really is symptomatic of a larger issue in Indo-US ties and indeed Indo-Pak relationship, which is the growing scope of groups like LeT and their ambition to conduct attacks not just against India but in places like the US, possibly against American troops in Afghanistan.
“It underlines the importance of us all working together to address that threat, and also for Pakistan to take action against LeT. We think that this is something that really is in Pakistan’s own interest to do because of the -- what the Secretary (of State Hillary Clinton) has termed kind of the syndicate that is operating now in Pakistan,” he said.
Mr. Blake said some welcome progress had been seen by Pakistan against militancy in Swat and South Waziristan.
“We hope that there can now be progress on this very important issue, which would have very consequential implications for India-Pakistan relations.”