FEARS GREW last night that Pakistan's resolve to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks to justice was faltering.
The government said it had lost track of one of India's most wanted militants following his supposed arrest only a few days ago.
Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Masood Azhar, leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group, was not under arrest, contradicting his government's previous claim that he was in custody.
"Other people have been detained but Masood Azhar is at large. We have no knowledge of his whereabouts," Mr Qureshi said in Islamabad.
The Pakistani defence ministry said a week ago that security forces had arrested Mr Azhar, who is suspected of launching an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.
The reversal will anger the Indian authorities, who have asked Pakistan to arrest as many as 40 "most wanted" militants in the wake of the Mumbai attacks and extradite them to India.
India has blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistani militant group, for the strikes.
Although Pakistan has made arrests and banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a charity linked to LeT, Islamabad insists it has been given no proof by India that the attacks involved its nationals.
Russia yesterday became the latest country to share intelligence publicly about the attacks. It said Dawood Ibrahim, a Mumbai mafia don and drug baron suspected of living in Pakistan, had provided logistical support for the attacks.
"The super profits of the narco-mafia through Afghan heroin trafficking have become a powerful source of financing organised crime and terrorist networks," said Victor Ivanov, director of Russia's anti-narcotics service, in an interview with state-controlled Rossiskaya Gazeta.
In a sign of escalating tensions, Islamabad yesterday formally protested over an incursion into its airspace at the weekend by two Indian fighter jets. Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari had played down the incident, calling it a "technical incursion".
The Indian air force denied any incursion took place.
As tensions rise between the nuclear states, the Indian navy tested a supersonic cruise missile from a moving ship in the Bay of Bengal. - ( Financial Timesservice)