Pakistan not to entertain Dawood extradition under new mechanism

New Delhi, Sep 20 (UNI) Barely days after the joint anti-terrorism institutional mechanism was announced, Pakistan today made it clear that it would not entertain any fresh demand from India for extradition of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

''This (the new terror mechanism) will not make any difference to that because we have (already) seriously investigated those complaints,'' Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Aziz Ahamed Khan told CNN-IBN when asked about India's demand to extradite terrorists like Dawood, Mazood Azhar and Hafeez Mohammed Sayeed.

''We have done serious follow ups on your complaints, we have investigated those and given our replies,'' he said.

Asked if that meant that Pakistan would continue to assert that Dawood Ibrahim was not in Pakistan, Khan said that was indeed the case.

The creation of an anti-terrorism institutional mechanism was part of the joint statement issued by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pervez Musharraf after their meeting on the sidelines of the NAM Summit in Havana, Cuba on September 16.

Mr Khan also said that Pakistan would not ban Jamaat ud Dawa, the parent organisation of the Lashkar e Toiba.

He said while Pakistan had banned terrorist outfits, Jamaat was a ''charitable organisation involved in charitable work'' and therefore ''there was no reason to ban it for the moment''.

On whether Pakistan would ban Jamaat ud Dawa if India provided specific intelligence on its terrorist activities through the new terror mechanism, he said he did not want to discuss speculative scenarios.

Mr Khan, while welcoming the setting up of the new terror mechanism, said it could work well if both sides wanted it to work.

Elaborating on the new joint anti terror mechanism, he said it was different from the existing Home Secretary-level dialogue because it was ''exclusively dedicated'' to ''real time intelligence sharing and exchange of information and evidence''.

He said Pakistan would back any ceasefire between the Centre and the Hizbul Mujahideen, but denied that Pakistan was sponsoring or harbouring any anti-India terrorists on its soil.

He also denied the existence of any terrorist infrastructure in any part of Pakistan and added that following the October 2005 earthquake, US and NATO military choppers and several NGOs, which went to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for relief and rehabilitation work did not report the existence of any such camps.

On Kashmir, Khan said that both Pakistan and India were ''sincerely committed'' to a final solution. ''The final solution is almost there to grab...

and as far as I am concerned only four weeks away... What is required is for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pervez Musharraf to sit and take a decision.'' Mr Khan declined to go into specifics of any possible solution but said the solution would have to be within the parameters already set out by both the leaders and sounded confident about the foreign secretary-level meeting next month making progress on Sir Creek and Siachen.

The Pakistani envoy Khan also virtually ruled out a Presidential pardon for Sarabjit Singh and questioned why there was a ''sudden interest (in India) in his case at the last minute''.

He said Singh had ''admitted his crime, an open trial was conducted, he had been proven guilty, and he has the right to appeal''. But he declined comment on media reports that Pakistan had informally proposed releasing Singh in exchange for Arif, an accused in the 2000 Red Fort terror attack.

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