Pak Foreign minister condemns Mumbai blasts

Washington, Jul 12: Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri condemned the ''ghastly'' train bombings in Mumbai, and called on New Delhi to join Islamabad to combat extremism.

Mr Kasuri referred to the bomb blasts while delivering a speech at the Carnegie International Endowment for Peace in Washington D C think-tank.

He said the attacks were ''ghastly'' and Pakistan ''strongly condemns the terrorist acts'' in Mumbai. ''The government of Pakistan has already condemned those in the strongest possible language,'' he said.

Mr Kasuri said it was now time for India and Pakistan to move past confidence-building measures to work towards a solution to the ''Kashmir conflict'', which he said was feeding extremism. He said terrorist attacks affect the whole world and ''that is why we say we want to settle Jammu and Kashmir issue,'' he added.

On Afghanistan, he said he had very good meetings with the US officials and was happy to note that the ''blame game'' (holding Pakistan responsible for rise in insurgency in Afghanistan) is now over. ''The Americans know and openly talk about the nexus between the war lords, the narcotics traffic, drug money and the Taliban.'' ''What we need today is greater intelligence sharing and we should work in a trilateral way involving the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan. We should coordinate our efforts and deal with the insurgency in Afghanistan.'' He said he had already told his Afghan counterpart that publicly attacking Pakistan would only amount to undermining his own government. He also added that Pakistan supports the Karzai government and has no problems in dealing with them.

UNI

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