Masood Azhar

Dec. 9: Pakistan today refused to hand over Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi to India while moving to dispel doubts whether the suspected Mumbai attack mastermind had been arrested at all.

Jaish-e-Mohammed founder Masood Azhar has also been held along with Lashkar-e-Toiba operations chief Lakhvi, defence minister Choudhry Mukhtar Ahmed said.

Pakistani newspaper The News had earlier reported that Azhar was under house arrest, his Bahawalpur home ringed by security personnel, but quoted sources to say no action would be taken against him unless India provided “concrete evidence” of his involvement in the Mumbai carnage.

“The arrests are being made for our own investigations. Even if allegations are proved against any suspect, he (Lakhvi) will not be handed over to India,” Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said. “We will proceed against those arrested under Pakistani laws.”

Apparently with an eye on the domestic audience, Qureshi warned that Pakistan was ready for war if attacked.

“We do not want to impose war, but we are fully prepared in case war is imposed on us,” he said. “It is our desire that there should be no war.”

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, writing in The New York Times mainly for an American audience, spoke of “peace” between India and Pakistan and said his country was committed to acting against “the non-state actors found within our territory”.Indian government sources said the arrests were a “positive” development but added cautiously that Delhi would wait for Islamabad to take “concrete” steps on its demands. They cited how Azhar had been detained by Pakistan at least twice in the past but released each time.

Delhi has asked Pakistan to close down terror camps on its soil and hand over Lakhvi and another 20 fugitives including Azhar and Lashkar chief Hafiz Saeed. Islamabad has ruled out extraditing any.

Pakistani officials had offered contradictory statements yesterday whether Lakhvi was among the “over a dozen” men arrested on Sunday when troops swooped on an alleged Lashkar camp near Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

A statement from the military acknowledged the arrests but was silent on Lakhvi. Two senior civilian officials said they believed Lakhvi was in custody only to be contradicted by two others.

Although the operation was carried out on Sunday, defence minister Ahmed, who spoke to CNN-IBN over the phone, said Lakhvi was arrested on Monday. “Lakhvi was picked up yesterday. Azhar has also been picked up.”

The confusion underscored the sensitivity of the issue: Islamabad knows any action against militants could set off a backlash at home, but wants to show India and the US that it is cracking down on the Mumbai attack suspects.