Rice, Durrani

Islamabad, Dec. 21 (PTI): The US summoned a top Pakistani official last week to say his government should realise the “gravity” of the Mumbai attack and that America may not be able to “bail out” Islamabad if it failed to act, Pakistani newspapers reported today.

US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen Hadley conveyed the warning to Pakistan’s national security adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani, whose three-day trip was kept under wraps by the Pakistan embassy in Washington.

The message from Rice and Hadley, who said the Mumbai attack could not be “swept under the carpet”, was much “stronger” this time compared with earlier warnings, Dawn reported.

Durrani and Pakistani ambassador Hussain Haqqani were told that Washington was not satisfied with what Islamabad “had done so far for eradicating terrorism from its soil”.

Dawn quoted a “senior diplomatic source familiar with the talks” as saying: “The curt message… was: this is not 2002 and you cannot do what President (Pervez) Musharraf did after 9/11.… In the past, you swept everything under the carpet while the problems were allowed to fester. No more.”

The Pakistanis were told the Mumbai attack was no ordinary event and the tendency in Pakistan to deal with it as a minor incident was going to hurt Islamabad, the newspaper said quoting sources.

The US officials “insisted they had enough evidence to prove that the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jamaat-ud Dawa were involved, and they wanted concrete action against all such groups”, a source said.

“They told the Pakistanis to understand the gravity of the situation and the seriousness of the evidence that exists to Pakistan’s links to this event,” the source added.

“The message the Americans gave was: this is the third time we are saying such a thing. We may not be able to bail you out the fourth time. Global terrorism is not just an India-Pakistan dispute. We see LeT (Lashkar) and Dawa at par with al Qaida. Pakistan should stop thinking of this as just another round of India-Pakistan altercations.”

Washington summoned Durrani since it was “getting increasingly frustrated with what it views as Islamabad’s shifty and shifting position on the Mumbai attacks and their aftermath”, Pakistani newspaper Daily Times reported.

Durrani concluded his unannounced US visit yesterday, during which he met Rice, Hadley and Pentagon officials.

Contradictory statements on the Mumbai attack from the top Pakistani leadership have cast doubts on Islamabad’s “willingness, and even its ability, to take the follow-up action it has committed itself to”, the Daily Times said.

It reported that Rice told Durrani that Pakistan “needs to do better, and while declarations of good intent are to be commended, they have to be translated through actions”.

US officials have been dismayed by statements like the one that said Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar had left the country, after it had been officially announced that he was under house arrest, the newspaper said.