India maintains Pakistan link to Mumbai attacks

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NEW DELHI, Dec 11 (Agencies): India's top law enforcement official Thursday said suspicion points "unmistakably" to a Pakistani link to the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
India's Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram has continued to suggest Pakistani involvement in Mumbai.
India's Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram has continued to suggest Pakistani involvement in Mumbai.
His Pakistani counterpart, however, repeated assertions that India has yet to provide the country with any evidence of the connection.
Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told India's parliament that investigations into last month's attacks in the country's financial capital were still not complete.
"I am, however, able to say that the finger of suspicion unmistakably points to the territory of our neighbor, Pakistan," he said. "The interrogation of the captured terrorist has yielded valuable material evidence. The origins of the 10 terrorists who entered India have been established conclusively."
Chidambaram also called Thursday for a sweeping overhaul of the country's intelligence and counterterrorism agencies after the massacre in Mumbai, declaring the country was in "the eye of a storm of terror."
"All aspects regarding intelligence are under my examination," Chidambaram told India's parliament. "Some changes have already been made, and more are under way."
Chidambaram took office when his predecessor resigned after the attacks. He said India's police, military and intelligence-gathering agencies would be restructured to enhance security, and that the government would ask lawmakers for tougher measures to battle extremist groups.
"Given the nature of the threat, we cannot go back to business as usual," he said. "In the next few weeks and months, it will be my endeavor to prepare the country and the people to face the challenge of terrorism."
The home minister said he had found failings in the way Indian agencies handled intelligence. Vague or imprecise intelligence reports were often deemed "not actionable," and responsibility for acting on intelligence was diffused among a number of agencies.
In the case of the Mumbai attacks, Chidambaram said, departments failed to follow up on crucial intelligence.
The heads of India's coast guard and naval intelligence had received reports of a suspected Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) vessel attempting to enter Indian waters, he said. The coast guard tried and failed to locate the vessel, while the navy found the vessel was in Pakistan's territorial waters. Without more information, however, the navy took no further action, he said.
Meanwhile: More spies and police, modern gadgets and a national investigation agency are among a slew of measures India is taking to prevent militant attacks like the one on Mumbai last month, the home minister said Thursday.
The move comes after criticism that the government was not doing enough to prevent attacks, such as the one on India's financial capital that killed 179 people, because there were vast gaps in its intelligence and security apparatus.
"I have found that there is a tendency to treat some intelligence inputs that are not specific or precise as not actionable intelligence," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told India's parliament in a statement about the Mumbai attack.
Chidambaram, who took over when the incumbent minister resigned after the Mumbai raids, admitted the coast guard and navy had intelligence that a vessel carrying militants could enter Indian waters.
But the boat couldn't be intercepted and 10 heavily armed gunmen attacked several Mumbai landmarks during a three-day siege, a strike India has blamed on nuclear rival Pakistan.
India's security agencies have long been criticised for lacking a cohesive counter-terrorism plan and poor intelligence gathering and analysis. Police are badly armed and often have nothing more than a stick with which to fight militants.
Highlighting poor security coordination, Indian newspapers have reported that one suspected supporter of the Mumbai attackers who was arrested in Kolkata was in fact an undercover officer trying to infiltrate Kashmiri militant groups.
Bombs and other attacks have hit India with such regularity that the country has been called one of the most dangerous places in the world. Some 400 people have been killed in about a dozen militant strikes this year.