by Frank James
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in India to express U.S sympathy with India in the aftermath of last week's Mumbai terrorist attacks. Her trip to India was also in part to try and ease tensions between India and Pakistan since the attackers' ties to Pakistan threaten to cause the always volatile relations between the two countries to worsen further.
Reporters asked Rice questions that she essentially dodged so as not to inflame sentiment within Pakistan.
She also sidestepped a question that she clearly thought answering straightforwardly could have provided the enemy, that is, terrorists with too much insight into what intelligence officials know.
Her answers suggest just how combustible the South Asian situation is and how careful U.S. diplomats must be in navigating the minefield of Indian-Pakistani relations.
Here's the relevant exchange with reporters:
QUESTION: Madame Secretary, the Indians have handed over another list of 20 fugitives that they would like Pakistan to deal with or to turn over. What do you think Pakistan's response should be at this time in order to ease tensions between the two countries?
SEC. RICE: Well, first of all, the Pakistani Government has said unequivocally that it intends to cooperate. And President Zardari has told me that he will follow the leads wherever they go, and I think that is a very important commitment on the part of Pakistan.
I think we should - I should refrain from speculation about what the Pakistani Government might do in response to specific requests because I - what has to happen here is that there has to be a real sense of transparency, a real sense of action, a real sense of urgency, because these are terrorists who are extremists who really have the same intention and the same goal, and that is to terrorize and send messages to states around the world, including -- by the way, extremists have done great damage in Pakistan. And so Pakistan and India and the United States - and I spent a good deal of time with my British counterpart when I was in London and with their people - we all have a great interest in getting to the bottom of this and we have a great interest in bringing people to justice and we have a great interest in prevention.
And so that would be my message. I don't want to get into the specifics of what Pakistan may or may not do. But I'm going to take, as a firm commitment, Pakistan's stated commitment to get to the bottom of this and to know that these are enemies of Pakistan, as well as they're enemies of India.
QUESTION: Nidhi Razdan from NDTV. Secretary Rice, I have a couple of questions. One is that -- what would your message to the Prime Minister be this evening? And secondly, does the United States know about the alleged perpetrators of the Mumbai attack in the sense that -- you know, India believes it's the Lashkar e-Tayyiba which now goes by a different name in Pakistan. It's leader, Hafiz Saeed, has been very public anti-India speeches calling for jihad against India.
Would you be sending a message to the Pakistani Government to at least arrest him, hand him over?
SEC. RICE: Well, I have already sent a message to the Pakistani Government, and the Pakistani Government has received that message favorably, which is that wherever this leads these people have to be brought to justice. And they - we need, or the government will need, to make certain that they're doing everything that they can to garner information so that you can prevent further attacks.
I will tell you that the last - over the last seven years, the experience of bringing people to justice, the experience of learning about the way that operations are carried out, learning about money flows -- I read this morning something about trying to trace money flows. Let me tell you, don't underestimate, in any case, the importance of getting to the bottom of funding for terrorism. It has been one of the most important tools that the United States has used in helping to trace people, plots, and money.
Secondly, I will say to the Prime Minister, again, that the United States is prepared to work on the intelligence information that we have. Obviously, I'm not going to go into details on that. One of the things that we all have to be very careful about is in empowering terrorists by allowing them to know what we know. I know that very often, and I respect the role not just of the press but of those who, in democratic states, want to know. But there is an important wall that must be there so that terrorists don't know what you know. They are very active and quick at reacting when they have leads. And so I will spend some time on that.
And then finally, as I said, I'm prepared to share with the Prime Minister any ideas that we may have, given our experience, of how to move forward toward a strategy of prevention. But this is a time for everybody to cooperate and to do so transparently, and this is especially a time for Pakistan to do so.
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