Home Minister P Chidambaram on Tuesday said investigators were probing if suspected terrorist David Headley had any links with Mumbai attacks as he had visited the country several times before they took place.
He visited India several times before 26/11 and therefore there is something we have to necessarily look into but as of now I cannot say whether there was a link or not," he told reporters on the sidelines of the India Economic Summit here.
Chidambaram sought to downplay the inability of Indian investigators to access Headley.
"The intelligence team did not go there with your agenda. The intelligence team was there with an agenda which we have set for it," he said.
Meanwhile, officials in the Home Ministry said the US investigators had sent a report on Headley's interrogation to their Indian counterparts.
A team of Indian intelligence officials, who had gone to the US to interrogate Headley, had to return without even meeting him because of "bureaucratic" and "procedural" hurdles.
Headley (49) was arrested last month at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport as he prepared to board a flight to Philadelphia, intending to travel to Pakistan. Subsequently FBI also arrested Rana, 48, a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin.
The top US diplomat said that in her conversations with both the civilian government leaders as well as the military intelligence, she found an awareness that the Taliban is not just about somebody else s fight, "it is a direct attack on the authority of the Pakistani Government".
"When you have extremists attacking your general army headquarters, your intelligence offices, who go right at the Islamic University in Islamabad, this is not some foreign plot," Clinton said.
"These are people, homegrown, who want to overthrow various aspects of the Pakistani Government and control territory within the boundaries of Pakistan. So there s no doubt in my mind that they see this as a direct threat," the Secretary of State underlined. Clinton said she did raise the issue of the Pakistani establishment not knowing the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, after listening to the Pakistani concerns about the US.
"We find it hard to believe that nobody knows where the al-Qaida leadership is. And I think that there is no evidence that anybody in the government at the top levels knows," she said. The Secretary said the US was trying to make Pakistani accept "the fact that the al-Qaida leadership is arrayed against them as well and still poses a direct threat to us". PTI
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