USA insists India had no role in placing a bounty on Hafiz Saeed’s head

USA insists India had no role in placing a bounty on Hafiz Saeed’s head

Pentagon spokesperson George Little says that groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba remain a threat to people in South Asia and to the US.

Speaking to reporters at a press briefing at the Pentagon, Little said that from the US perspective, the Lashkar e Taiba is a very dangerous group that has mounted operations externally. “This is a very serious issue for us and that is why you saw this announcement,”
said the Pentagon spokesperson. He added that the Pakistani government understands the United States’ long standing concerns about Lashkar-e-Taiba.

In response to a question on co-operation with Pakistan, Little declined to get into specific details of their discussions with the Pakistani side, but said that it was on looking for ways to co-operate with the Pakistani military.

Meanwhile, US state department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, explaining the delay in a bounty being placed on Hafiz Saeed and his brother-in-aw Abdu Rahman Makki, said that plans were underway for months, but less than a year, to put up the reward on the
JuD duo.

She said that the process involves an intelligence evaluation. “There has to be a policy evaluation. There has to be a discussion with Congress. This is a lot of money for the US taxpayer to put up, and so that process takes some time. Things have to be
correlated. There is an entire review process. There’s an interagency rewards committee that has to look through this, and then the secretary has to approve it.”

Asked about the how and when Saeed was linked to the 2008 Mumbai attacks, she said “sometimes what happens is intelligence and other information comes later with regards to whereabouts of individuals, which leads one to think that offering a reward might
cause citizens who know where they are to come forward.”

“Sometimes that isn’t evident right at the time of the crime, so sometimes it comes up later … over the last few months, that this kind of a reward might hasten the judicial process, if you will.”

Asked whether the prize related to Hafiz Saeed’s defence that he had been whipping up public pressure on the Pakistan government to not reopen the Nato supply route, Nuland dismissed the notion. “No, it has everything to do with Mumbai and his brazen flouting
of the justice system.”

She added that the US had been in communication with Pakistani authorities over the fire brand cleric’s arrest.

“We have continued to impress on the government of Pakistan that we believe it has a special responsibility to fully investigate and bring those responsible to justice to the extent that it can. The government of Pakistan has regularly, in our conversations
with them, pledged its cooperation in the investigations. We fully expect that it will follow through on those commitments. I would guess that this case probably will come up.”

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Posted by Ammar Ahmad on Apr 4 2012. Filed under Latest News, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry