(Source: McClatchy Washington Bureau)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan _ The Pakistani government on Wednesday abruptly fired its national security adviser after he confirmed that the surviving gunman captured in the Mumbai attacks is a Pakistani, a key piece of evidence contained in a dossier amassed by India on alleged Pakistani complicity in the three-day assault.
A McClatchy Newspapers investigation established four weeks ago that the only assailant captured alive, Amir Ajmal Kasab, comes from Faridkot, an impoverished hamlet in Pakistan's Punjab Province.
Retired Army Gen. Mehmood Ali Durrani's confirmation of the surviving assailant's nationality, the first by a senior Pakistani official, followed weeks of denials by Islamabad that any of the terrorists were Pakistani.
Durrani's ouster suggests that a struggle is raging in the Pakistan government over responding to the Indian dossier and material gathered by the U.S. that blames the November attacks on a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group with ties to a Pakistani intelligence agency.
The attacks on two major tourist hotels, a Jewish center and other sites in India's financial capital left 163 people dead and stoked serious tensions between India and Pakistan, the nuclear-armed rivals that have fought three wars since winning independence from Britain in 1947.
Intent on pressing a diplomatic offensive against Pakistan, India was expected to send Home Minister P. Chidambaram to Washington this week in part to seek additional intelligence that the U.S. may have on Pakistani links to the attacks, a State Department official said.
"The Indians want to use this visit to basically fill out their dossier," said the State Department official, who asked to remain anonymous because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. "They think we've got the goods."
A U.S. government consultant, who asked not to be further identified to speak more frankly, said that India, which for years has been battling fighters from Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Pakistan-backed militants on its side of the disputed Kashmir region, has warned the White House that it won't tolerate another strike by extremists linked to Pakistan.
"The Indians have said that if there is one more attack _ it doesn't have to be a Mumbai _ all hell will break loose. This is what they've told the White House," he said.
The Bush administration is pressing Pakistan to bring to justice those who were responsible for the attacks. It fears that retaliatory steps by India could ignite a conflict that would end Pakistan's crackdown on al-Qaida and Taliban fighters along the border with Afghanistan.
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