Slamming Pakistan for the expanding terrorist footprints on its soil, India on Thursday said it had clear evidence that the Mumbai attack was planned and launched by the western neighbour, and this had strained the peace process.
The Defence Ministry, in its annual report for 2008-09 released here on Thursday, said: “The terrorist attack on Mumbai in November 2008 and the clear evidence that the attack was planned and launched by Pakistan have thereafter led to a pause in the (peace) process” between New Delhi and Islamabad.
The 220-page report said the fact that many of the extremist outfits in Pakistan had known record of terrorist attacks against India amounted to a security challenge with serious implications for the country.
“The continuing links of these organisations (terrorists) with organs of the Pakistan State adds greater complexities and dangers to the evolving situation confronting us,” it said.
“Strengthening of our security apparatus, both internally and on our frontiers is, therefore, a national priority of the highest order. Pakistan’s history of military and quasi-military adventurism underscrore the seriousness of the threat we face,” the Defence Ministry added.
It also noted that the year had witnessed a marked rise in terrorist incidents all over Pakistan including capital Islamabad, apart from the previously affected areas of FATA and NWFP.
The Defence Ministry said the unimpeded growth of extremist and terrorist organisations in Pakistan was marked by an increase in ceasefire violations, continued infiltration across the LoC, as also major terrorist attacks.
“All this placed an immense strain on the India-Pakistan Composite Dialogue process,” it added.
On Afghanistan, the Defence Ministry said the deteriorating internal security there and the resurgence of Taliban, Al Qaeda and other terror groups since 2006 constituted a threat to stability of the entire South and Central Asian region.
“The terrorist attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008, in which five Embassy personnel and a large number of Afghan nationals were killed, demonstrated that India’s efforts at reconstruction and development were implacably opposed by these groups,” it said.
The report said security in southern and eastern Afghanistan was closely related to developments in the borders with Pakistan, where sanctuaries provided the bases from which these groups operated.
India said the convergence of extremist and terrorist groups in Afghanistan with those operating out of Pakistan, often with the patronage of its State agencies, had consequently contributed immensely to the deterioration of India’s external security environment.
Referring to the US-led global war on terror, the Defence Ministry said after a policy review in March 2009, Washington announced a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, emphasising a regional approach.
“In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the US goal is to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan,”
