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Friday, Dec 12, 2008
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Pakistan will fulfil obligations: Gilani

Nirupama Subramanian

Saeed slams United Nations decision against him and group

Photo: AFP

Policemen remove a board of Jamat-ud-Dawah charity office in Hyderabad, Pakistan on Thursday. —

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has taken note of the designation of the Jamat-ud-Dawah and its leader Hafiz Mohammed Saeed as “terrorist” by the United Nations Security Council and would fulfil its international obligations, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said.

But Saeed slammed the decision against him and his group, which has been held by the UNSC to be a front of the Lashkar-e-Taiba that was banned earlier, as “an attack on Pakistan, on Islam and on all religious organisations.”

At a press conference in Lahore, at which television cameras were not allowed show him, the JuD leader who also founded the LeT, said the decision was based on “Indian propaganda,” and said he was prepared to go before any court in the world to prove that his organisation was a charity group.

He also obliquely threatened consequences. “We will go to the court of the Pakistani people. We will stand before the people of this country and demand our right,” Saeed said.

Mr. Gilani told visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte that “Pakistan has taken note of the designation of certain individuals and entities by the UN under 1267 resolution of the UN Security Council and would fulfil its international obligations,” according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s office.

The Prime Minister’s statement was the only immediate official response to the UN decision, which has increased pressure on Pakistan to act decisively against a group India suspects of orchestrating the Mumbai attacks.

Earlier Rehman Malik, who heads the Interior Ministry, said Pakistan’s crackdown earlier this week against one office of the LeT on its side of Kashmir had not been done “under dictation or instructions” from India and the U.S., but was a “continuation” of Pakistan’s own role in the “war on terror.”

He declined to answer questions on the terrorist tag to the JuD by the UN, saying the Foreign Ministry would “give a full response on it.”

But he said Pakistan had offered the Indian government “full co-operation” in the investigation.

This point was stressed by President Asif Ali Zardari, Mr. Gilani and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in their separate meetings with Mr. Negroponte.

Mr. Zardari told the Deputy Secretary that Pakistan condemned the Mumbai attacks.

He said the government was undertaking its own investigation and taking “appropriate measures.”

Mr. Negroponte also met Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

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