Temperatures continuing to rise. “India Demands Action From Pakistan,” by Matthew Rosenberg and Eric Bellman, from the Wall Street Journal, December 1 (thanks to DFS):
MUMBAI, India — With evidence of a Pakistani link to the attack on Mumbai growing, India demanded Monday that Islamabad hand over two important terror suspects and warned that relations between the nuclear-armed rivals would suffer if swift action isn’t taken.
Indian officials told Pakistan’s senior envoy to New Delhi of the demands after summoning him to the foreign ministry, said an official familiar with the meeting.
“He was informed that the recent terrorist attack on Mumbai was carried out by elements from Pakistan,” the foreign ministry said in a statement after the meeting. India “expects that strong action would be taken against those elements, whosoever they may be, responsible for this outrage.”
The two men India is pressing Pakistan to turn over have long topped New Delhi’s most wanted list. They are Dawood Ibrahim, a one-time Mumbai gangster with ties to everyone from Bollywood power brokers to Islamic militants, and Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of the banned Pakistani militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, who was once jailed in India.
Both men have been accused of orchestrating previous attacks in India, but neither has been directly implicated in last week’s assault on Mumbai that left at least 172 people dead and 239 wounded. Diplomats and political analysts say that suggests India is using the international outrage over the attack to pressure Pakistan for a broader crackdown against Islamist militant groups and individuals believed to be targeting India, which has suffered more than a dozen terror bombings in the past three years.
There was no immediate reaction from Pakistan to the Indian demands….