Make HuffPost Your HomePage
Get Email Alerts
US Official: India Attack May Have Pakistani Roots
WASHINGTON — U.S. and British citizens were the targets of the violent siege in Mumbai last week, although most of those killed in India's financial capital were Indians, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.
Six Americans died in the attacks, which killed at least 172 people and wounded 239.
The same group that carried out last week's attack is believed to be behind the 2006 Mumbai trains bombings that killed more than 200, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell said Tuesday during a speech at Harvard University.
McConnell did not identify the group by name. However, the Indian government has attributed the 2006 attack to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani terrorist group based in Kashmir, and the Students Islamic Movement of India.
McConnell is the first U.S. official to publicly identify Lashkar as the likely perpetrator. Earlier Tuesday, a senior State Department official told reporters only that the brutal, prolonged attack had some roots in Pakistan. Privately, U.S. and foreign counterterrorism officials fingered Lashkar last week.
Earlier, at a Pentagon news conference, Gates said that chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, had gone to the region to meet with officials. Mullen's spokesman, Navy Capt. John Kirby, said the attacks reflect a growing sophistication among extremist groups and going to encourage a regional approach to security concerns.
Indian authorities have claimed a Pakistan connection for days, but the United States has not wanted to "jump to conclusions," as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday. The administration fears that any misstep amid the extraordinarily high emotions surrounding the three-day assault could spark new and possibly deadly tensions between longtime, nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan.
Also Tuesday, senior administration officials and a foreign government official said Washington had advised India that a waterborne attack on Mumbai appeared to be in the works, and that Westerners and Israelis may be targeted. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of intelligence information. The officials would not elaborate on either the timing or details of the U.S. warning. However, they said the warning information was too general to take immediate action.
Rice will visit India on Wednesday, carrying the U.S. demand that Pakistan cooperate fully in the investigation into the attack.
Neither Rice nor Gates would confirm that the United States had passed specific information to India ahead of the attacks.
"Obviously we try to pass information to countries all around the world if we pick up information," Rice said at a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
The revelation of a U.S. warning to Indian counterparts about a possible attack comes as the Indian government faces widespread accusations of security and intelligence failures concerning the assault. Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said his country gave a list of about 20 people _ including India's most-wanted man _ to Pakistan's envoy in New Delhi on Monday.
Pakistan's ambassador to the United States said the attack was meant to destabilize the wider region.
"The target of this terrorist act was not just India. It was also Pakistan's fledgling democracy, and the India/Pakistan peace process," Ambassador Husain Haqqani told The Associated Press. "Extremists have wanted India and Pakistan to be at each others' throats for a long time."
The only surviving attacker told police that he and the other nine gunmen had trained for months in camps in Pakistan operated by the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Mumbai police commissioner Hasan Ghafoor said ex-Pakistani army officers trained the group _ some for up to 18 months.
Lashkar is based in the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan. It was banned in Pakistan in 2002 under pressure from the U.S., a year after Washington and Britain listed it a terrorist group. It is since believed to have emerged under another name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, though that group has denied links to the Mumbai attack.
The State Department issued at least two terror-related warnings to Americans in India in October, including one specifically covering western India, which includes Mumbai. These warnings are usually issued after threat information is received, but are less specific than what intelligence agencies would pass on to their counterparts. They highlighted the holiday season in India and the potential for large crowds in shopping areas, restaurants and train stations, which are frequently targeted by terrorists. Neither warnings specifically mentioned hotels, places where much of the violence occurred.
___
Anne Gearan reported from Brussels, Belgium. AP Writers Matthew Lee, Pamela Hess, Lolita C. Baldor and Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this story.
Loading comments…
JENNIFER LOVEN and ANNE GEARAN | December 2, 2008 08:53 PM EST |
Compare other versions »Compare and versions