New Delhi, Dec. 2: Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta today admitted that there was a “systemic failure” that terrorists exploited to attack Mumbai last week.

Mehta is the senior-most serving military officer in the country. He is the chairman of the chiefs of staff committee. The navy he heads is tasked, along with other agencies, to patrol the maritime boundary and check infiltration from the sea. But Mehta said the navy had not got any “actionable intelligence”.

He was asked if he was concerned as the navy chief by the public outrage and the lack of faith in the security forces.

“It (the public outrage) is a serious issue. There is, shall we say, a systemic failure and there is no doubt that it needs to be addressed and taken stock of,” Mehta said.

The failure was not only of the navy but also of intelligence agencies, the coast guard and the police, the navy chief’s admission indicated. He said there were “lacunae” in the coastal security grid. It can be embarrassing for the government to get such an admission from its most senior military commander.

Mehta said he did not want to go into the specifics of intelligence that was passed on. “The exchange of information is an ongoing and regular function. But information given should be actionable. When actionable input has come we have acted. The coast guard had deployed ships on the coast of Gujarat,” he said. Mehta has been the chief of the coast guard.

The terrorists are suspected to have sailed to Mumbai after hijacking a trawler off Gujarat, the MV Kuber, and then used inflatable rafts to beach. Mehta said policing coastal waters was a tough task.

“There are 1.5 lakh registered fishing trawlers in India, of which over 50,000 are in Gujarat and Maharashtra. If you take even one third in Mumbai it comes to nearly 5,000 trawlers, which is a fairly large number. There is a difference between Indian and Pakistani trawlers but if an Indian trawler is being used, as in this case, then we are helpless. This is a lacunae and we have to plug it,” the navy chief said.

US hints at Pak role

A group partly or completely based in Pakistan may have been responsible for the the Mumbai attacks, a senior US state department official said in Brussels.

“There are a lot of reasons to think it might be a group, partially or wholly a group, that is located on Pakistan’s territory,” the official said on the sidelines of a meeting of Nato foreign ministers.

The official, who did not identify the source of his information, spoke hours before US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was to leave Brussels for New Delhi to discuss last week’s attacks with the Indian government.

“They (pakistan officials) have promised to be willing and committed to following up and pursuing it,” said the official.

“They accept the possibility that there might be people located on Pakistani territory,” he added. We all need to trade information and pursue every possible lead.”