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Navigation Primary Navigation Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Top Stories Most Popular Secondary Navigation Australia China India Indonesia Japan Malaysia Philippines Thailand Vietnam Search Search: Top Indian official admits 'lapses' in attacks By MUNEEZA NAQVI,Associated Press Writer AP - 2 hours 31 minutes ago MUMBAI, India - India's top law enforcement official admitted Friday there were government "lapses" in last week's terror attack on Mumbai, amid a public uproar over security and intelligence failures in the deadly siege. "There have been lapses. I would be less than truthful if I said there had been no lapses," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told reporters, saying he was seeking to bolster the country's security. The assault on India's financial capital left 171 dead and 239 wounded. Chidambaram, only days in the post after the previous minister was ousted after the attacks, made the acknowledgment as new details surfaced that a Pakistani militant group had used an Indian operative as far back as 2007 to scout targets in the Mumbai plot. Indian officials have accused Pakistani-based extremists in the Nov. 26-29 attacks, an assertion echoed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday. "The territory of a neighboring country has been used for perpetrating this crime," Singh said after meeting with visiting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "We expect the international community to wake up and recognize that terror anywhere and everywhere constitutes a threat to world peace and prosperity." The surviving gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, told interrogators he had been sent by the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and identified two of the plot's masterminds, according to two Indian government officials familiar with the inquiry. Police had earlier identified the gunman as Ajmal Amir Kasab. Soon after it was banned in 2002 amid U.S pressure, Lashkar-e-Taiba changed its name to Jamaat-ud-Dawa, according to the U.S. State Department. The U.S. lists both groups as terrorist organizations. Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, who heads Jamaat-ud-Dawa, though U.S. authorities in May described him as the overall leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, denied in an interview that there was a Pakistani hand behind the attacks, and called on Indian authorities to act like "a responsible country." Saeed is considered the founder of both groups. "The Indian leadership is using Pakistan as a punching bag to cover its failures at home," Saeed told Outlook magazine in an interview released Friday. "Instead of blaming Pakistan, India should have acted as a responsible country, shown patience and focused on investigating the attacks to find out the real culprits." "I can say with authority," he continued, "that the Lashkar does not believe in killing civilians." The interview was conducted in Lahore on Wednesday with the magazine's foreign editor, Aijaz Ashraf. Kasab told police that a senior Lashkar leader, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the group's operations chief, recruited him for the attack, and the assailants called another senior leader, Yusuf Muzammil, on a satellite phone before the attacks. The information sent investigators back to another reputed Lashkar operative, Faheem Ansari. Ansari, an Indian national, was arrested in February in north India carrying hand-drawn sketches of hotels, the train terminal and other sites that were later attacked in Mumbai, Amitabh Yash, director of the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh police, said Thursday. During his interrogation, Ansari also named Muzammil as his handler in Pakistan, adding that he trained in a Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad _ the same area where Kasab said he was trained, a senior police officer involved in the investigation said. In Pakistan, the Interior Ministry chief told reporters he had no immediate information on Lakhvi or Muzammil. According to the U.S., Lakhvi has directed Lashkar operations in Chechnya, Bosnia and Southeast Asia, training members to carry out suicide bombings and attack populated areas. In 2004, he allegedly sent operatives and funds to attack U.S. forces in Iraq. Lashkar, outlawed by Pakistan in 2002, has been deemed by the U.S. a terrorist group with ties to al-Qaida. The group has derived some of its funding from organizations based in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, with its leaders making fundraising trips to the Middle East in recent years, U.S. officials say. Islamist charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, accused by the U.S. of being the front group for Lashkar, on Thursday denied any connection to the attacks. "It is true we had links with Lashkar-e-Taiba in the past, but please remember, the past is the past," said Abdullah Muntazir, spokesman for the group, based on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan. "We are the victim of baseless Indian propaganda, we are not involved in attacks in India, we are just doing welfare work and nothing else." Unsourced Indian media reports said officers from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency were involved in training the gunmen and even organizing the attack. However, Indian officials said it was too early in the investigation to say so definitively. "At this stage, it would not be correct to name any organization but you can draw conclusions," Chidambaram said after he was asked about possible ISI involvement. But a senior agency official denied it was involved. "We don't want to comment on these baseless India reports, but as a matter of fact we are not behind what happened in Mumbai and the government of Pakistan has made it very clear," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of agency policy. Ansari, the reputed Lashkar operative arrested in February, told police about a planned Lashkar attack on Mumbai, providing eight or nine specific locations to be targeted, Yash said, adding that Ansari had detailed sketches of the sites as well as escape routes. Ansari said he carried out reconnaissance in the fall of 2007 of different Mumbai locations, including the U.S. Consulate, the stock exchange and other sites that weren't attacked, Yash said. Ansari also confessed to arranging a safe house in Mumbai. Authorities were working to determine whether Ansari, who is in Indian custody, helped the attackers acquire "such intricate knowledge of the sites," said Rakesh Maria, a senior Mumbai police official. Indian authorities already face a torrent of criticism about missed warnings and botched intelligence. Linking an Indian national to the plot also undermines India's assertion that Pakistani "elements" were solely responsible. Ansari linked up with Lashkar while working at a printing press in Dubai. He was taken by sea to Pakistan to the Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad and received a false Pakistani passport and citizenship papers, Yash said. After traveling to Nepal last year, Ansari crossed back into India and settled in Mumbai, Yash said. He was arrested Feb. 10 in the northern city of Rampur after suspected Muslim militants attacked a police camp, killing eight constables. He said he was there to collect weapons to bring to Mumbai for a future attack. Yash said Ansari's arrest did not derail Lashkar's plans for an attack. "When they found that their mole in Bombay had been caught ... they carried out the operations in a different way," he said. Meanwhile, police officers said they were trying to get as much detail as possible from Kasab. "A terrorist of this sort is never cooperative. We have to extract information," said Deven Bharti, the head of the Mumbai crime branch. Indian police are known to use interrogation methods that would be regarded as torture in the West. Bharti provided no details on interrogation techniques, but said "truth serum" would probably be used next week. He did not specify what drug would be used. Police described Kasab as a fourth grade dropout from an impoverished village who was gravitating to a life of crime. "Lashkar recruited him, preying on a combination of his religious sentiments and his poverty," Maria said. ____ Associated Press writers Ramola Talwar Badam in Mumbai, Sam Dolnick, Ashok Sharma and Tim Sullivan in New Delhi, and Biswajeet Banerjee in Lucknow contributed to this report. Email Story IM Story Printable View Blog This Recommend this article Average (0 votes) Sign in to recommend this article » Most Recommended Stories » Related Articles: Asia Pacific Car bomb kills 20 in northwest Pakistan's PeshawarAP - 1 hour 40 minutes ago Torture charge added against Khmer Rouge defendantAP - 2 hours 12 minutes ago Six-nation NKorea talks on track for Beijing, US saysAFP - 2 hours 31 minutes ago Top Indian official admits 'lapses' in attacksAP - 2 hours 31 minutes ago India's Singh hails ally Russia as nuclear, space deals signedAFP - 2 hours 46 minutes ago Most Popular – Asia Pacific Viewed Big Three automakers face skeptical Congress in rescue plea Cruise ship runs aground in Antarctica Do not disturb eggs: MP reveals Britain's oddest laws Central banks slash interest rates to drive back recession Wall Street plunges as recession becomes reality View Complete List » Search: Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Top Stories Most Popular

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