INDIA: Pakistan says it will take action if India provides evidence that it is connected to the July commuter train bombings in Mumbai that killed 186 people, but it would not hand over any suspect.
The foreign ministry in Islamabad said no formal communication had arrived from India regarding alleged collusion between Pakistan's Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) and a banned Islamist militant group in executing the attack during rush hour on July 11th.
However, Islamabad and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT ) or Army of the Pure, the Pakistan-based Islamic militant group blamed by New Delhi for the serial blasts on rush-hour commuter trains in India's financial hub, have rejected the accusations made by Mumbai's police commissioner AN Roy as "baseless".
Mr Roy said an intensive investigation, which included the use of "narco-analysis tests" - or questioning suspects injected with "truth serum" - had revealed that at least 12 Indians and 11 Pakistanis were involved in the bombings.
Of these, 15 had been arrested, including 11 Pakistanis, while the remainder have absconded.
"The conspiracy was hatched in Pakistan," Mr Roy said. The "terror plot", he continued, was ISI-sponsored and executed by LeT operatives with help from the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), proscribed by Delhi since 2001 for conducting "subversive" activities.
Mr Roy said the ISI began planning the attacks in March and provided funding and training for the bombers in the Pakistani town of Bahawalpur in the eastern Punjab province, a centre of militant Muslim activity.
One of the LeT cadres smuggled in between 33lb to 44lb of high-grade RDX plastic explosive to make the bombs in Mumbai, he continued, while funds to execute the attack came from Pakistan via a Lashkar operative in Saudi Arabia.
The bomber team then slipped into India directly from Pakistan, across the porous frontier and via neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh. They were met by Indian sleepers from SIMI, Mr Roy said, who brought them to Mumbai and housed them in rented apartments.
After sifting through mountains of debris left behind by the blasts, anti-terrorist squad investigators concluded that the bombs were made by packing the smuggled RDX with ammonium nitrate into five-litre pressure cookers at four different locations in northern Mumbai.
This lethal cargo was then transported to one location in the Bandra area to the flat rented by Faizal Sheikh, one of the main suspects who police say is a senior LeT leader.
On July 11th, the day of the bombings, seven teams of two terrorists each - one Indian and one Pakistani - took the bombs inside carry bags covered with newspapers and an umbrella each to disguise them to the busy Churchgate terminus in south Mumbai and left aboard various trains.
Set off by timers, all seven bombs exploded within 11 minutes, killing 186 people and injuring another 700.
"We will judge them [ Pakistan] not by immediate reactions or verbal statements [ but] by what they actually do about terrorism," said India's new foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon.