India disappointed with verdict on Saeed

Hours after the apex court in Pakistan upheld the Lahore High Court’s June 2, 2009, order to release Saeed from ‘house arrest’, New Delhi said it was disappointed and hoped Islamabad would “take meaningful actions” to deliver on its assurances of not allowing Pakistan territory to be used for attacks on India.

“There is a sense of disappointment and I am sure everybody in this country will share the same sense of disappointment on this development…We regard Saeed as one of the masterminds of the (November 26, 2008) terrorist attacks in Mumbai and he has also openly urged jihad against India,” said Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao.

She told journalists that New Delhi had provided Islamabad enough evidence of Saeed’s role in plotting the 26/11 carnage that was carried out by the 10 Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) terrorists from Pakistan.

“Since Pakistan has assured us that it would not allow its territory to be used against India, we hope that it will be sensitive to our concerns and take meaningful action,” said Rao.

The ‘disappointment’ came just a day after the PM told a news conference in New Delhi that he was hopeful that the dialogue process between India and Pakistan would move forward and that was the message he had got from Gilani, whom he had met in Thimphu on the sidelines of the SAARC summit on April 29 last.

Singh on Monday had sent about 20 kg of delicious Alphonso mangoes to Gilani as a goodwill gesture.Ending the post 26/11 diplomatic chill, Singh and Gilani had agreed in Thimphu that the Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Ministers of the two neighbours would meet as soon as possible “to take the process forward” and to explore ways “to restore trust and build mutual confidence”. Rao is likely to meet her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir in Islamabad towards the end of June. This will be followed by a meeting between External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi in July.|

Sources said Delhi was trying to ascertain if the evidences it had provided to Islamabad had been presented before the Pakistan Supreme Court.