The Londoner

NEW DELHI: Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday warned India against any "over-reaction" after the militant attacks in Mumbai and vowed the "strictest" action if Pakistani involvement was proved. "Whoever is responsible for the brutal and crude act against the Indian people and India are looking for reaction," Zardari said in an interview with Indian CNN-IBN television. "We have to rise above them and make sure ourselves, yourself and world community guard against over-reaction," he said according to an interview transcript issued by the Press Trust of India. The Indian government has blamed "elements in Pakistan" for the attack by Islamist militants against multiple targets in Mumbai that left nearly 200 people dead. Zardari promised that he would take immediate and strong measures if proof was provided of Pakistani involvement. "Let me assure you that if any evidence points to any individual or any group in this part o...

The three-day long terror strike in its financial capital Mumbai has pushed India to be among the 20 most dangerous places to visit on Earth, a British report has said. Listing India among the world's 20 most dangerous places after the Mumbai terror strike that claimed close to 200 lives, UK daily The Telegraph said in an online report noted that the British government was currently advising against all, but essential, travel to Mumbai. India has been listed along side places like Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Mexico, Thailand and South Africa in this list. Chechnya, Jamaica, Sudan, Colombia, Haiti, Eritrea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Burundi, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Lebanon have also been named among the 20 "most dangerous places to visit on Earth." Writing on India, the report said, "Although the Foreign Office is currently advising against all but essential travel to Mumbai, most of the rest of the country ...

ISLAMABAD: The country's top three political and military leaders met on Saturday to discuss the tricky situation resulting from the Indian government's move to blame 'elements within Pakistan' for the Mumbai carnage, but some of the actions and statements in response to Delhi's tirade were indicative of a growing gulf between the government and the security establishment on the ways and means to handle the entire affair. The chief of Army Staff General Asfaq Pervaiz Kayani had a detailed meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Sources in the government said almost the entire discussion was focused on the situation arising out of the Mumbai episode, and Pakistan's response to Delhi's accusations. Although there was no official word on what actually conspired during the meeting, the official and unofficial statements emanating from different quarters of the establishment suggested clear differences in perception, if not ...

Fareed Zakaria NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Dec 8, 2008 My first memories of the Taj Mahal hotel are probably of when I was 8 years old, going to the Sea Lounge restaurant with its lovely view of Mumbai's harbor to eat sev puri, a savory Indian treat. I also remember passing through its grand ballroom a few years later, while it was being decked out for a dinner in honor of the president of Bulgaria—crystal chandeliers, ice sculptures, bouquets of roses, platters of shrimp carted around by liveried waiters. My family would celebrate special occasions at the Golden Dragon, one of the best Chinese restaurants outside of China. The Taj is a fixture in the life of Mumbaikers (or Bombayites as we used to call ourselves). Last week, those memories came flooding back as I watched from New York, and saw the Taj hotel on fire. The terror attack on Mumbai has been called India's 9/11. For me there is another similarity; like 9/11, this attack hit close to home. My brother worke...

Aatish Taseer Barely a couple of weeks ago my stepsister, Shalaka, got married at the Taj hotel in Mumbai. Last Wednesday night my stepfather, Ajit, called to pay the bill. When he arrived home 10 minutes later he realised he had left his mobile phone charger behind, so he called Mandira, the Taj banquet manager. “I can’t speak now, sir,” she said. “We’re under attack.” Ajit lives in a building next door to Mumbai’s other big hotel, the Oberoi. Within a few moments, he heard gunshots from there too. In the 48 hours that followed, his neighbourhood was sealed off and his building came under attack. In the windows of the Oberoi he saw deserted rooms, half-drawn curtains, fires, brown smoke and gunmen moving from floor to floor. By Friday, he knew that three chefs who had worked at his daughter’s wedding and the family of the Taj’s general manager were dead. Friends of his sisters had also been killed. As terrorist attacks went — and Mumbai has known several in the past few years — it did...

Sameer Reddy Newsweek Web Exclusive Shortly before the bombs went off in Mumbai, Krsna Mehta, a graphic and textile designer who lives in South Bombay and a close friend of mine, had hosted, of all things, the launch of his new line at the Bombay Store, India' s first lifestyle store which was founded in 1906 to market goods made in India. The product line of custom-printed cushions, notebooks and table accessories celebrated Bombay masti—a Hindi word that, in this context, describes the city's particular magical appeal. "Everyone was there and people were buying like there's no tomorrow," he told me. "I was the last to leave, and I was headed to the Taj for dinner, but at the last minute I changed my mind," opting instead to go to a local club. "At that moment, I heard the first blast. I had no idea what was happening. The irony is that an hour earlier people had come together to celebrate the spirit of Bombay and the new India, while at the same ...

Indian commandos today killed the last remaining gunmen holed up at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, ending a 60-hour rampage that killed 195 people in India's financial capital. Orange flames and black smoke engulfed the landmark 565-room luxury hotel after dawn Saturday as Indian forces ended the siege there in a hail of gunfire, just hours after elite commandos stormed a Jewish center and found nine hostages dead. "There were three terrorists, we have killed them," said JK Dutt, director general of India's elite National Security Guard commando unit. Some hotel guests were still believed to be in their rooms. "They are still scared, so even when we request them to come out and identify ourselves, they are naturally afraid," Dutt said. With the end of one of the most brazen terror attacks in India's history, authorities have now shifted their focus to who is behind the attacks. A previously unknown Muslim group has claimed responsibility. Some 295 people...

By Sikander Hayat The question is who is to benefit most from the terrorist incidences in Mumbai . One thing was on the rise in India before this tragedy happened and that was the growing recognition that parts of Indian Army & I ntelligence Agencies are directly involved in some of the terrorist instances happening in India . The capture of Col. Prohit with many of his accomplices by the ATS ( Anti Terrorism Squad) was being deeply criticised by the Indian Army top brass and right wing Hindu political and militant outfits like BJP, Shiv Sena, VHP e.t.c . The leader of the ATS was one of the first people to be killed by the terrorists. Shot in the chest three times to make sure his demise. Do you think this is a coincidence? There was a growing awareness in India that terrorism comes in all colours; green or saffron . Indian Military Intelligence agencies were feeling very uneasy about this process and wanted to stop it in its tracks. That’s what is going to happen now as ...

By Maria Misra Images of that great Bombay monument, the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, engulfed in flames and thick billowing smoke cannot help but recall the collapsing twin towers of 9/11. The attack seems to bear all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation. The terrorists chose Bombay (Mumbai), the New York of India; they targeted iconic buildings - the Taj and the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, the flamboyant mini-St Pancras that is redolent of the Raj-era glory days. The terrorists are reported to have been daring in their approach - they arrived by sea not far from the Raj's 1911 monument to itself, the basalt Gateway of India. The Bombay outrage is a reminder of how crucial South Asia is in the creation of radical Islamist terrorism. Although the US often points the finger at Europe as its main incubator, it is in the sub-continent and the surrounding arc of states, simmering with ethnic and religious rivalries, that Islamist extremism thrives. India has been plagued by more ...

( This article was first published in Time magazine) The disembodied voice was chilling in its rage. A gunman, holed up in Mumbai's Oberoi Trident hotel where some 40 people had been taken hostage, told an Indian news channel that the attacks were revenge for the persecution of Muslims in India. "We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he asked via telephone. No answer came. But then he probably wasn't expecting one. The roots of Muslim rage run deep in India, nourished by a long-held sense of injustice over what many Indian Muslims believe is institutionalized discrimination against the country's largest minority group. The disparities between Muslims, which make up 13.4% of the population, and India's Hindu population, which hovers around 80%, are striking. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking Muslim Indians have shorter life spans, worse health, lower literacy levels, and l...

The Mumbai attacks are unique in the history of recent violent militancy, Islamist or otherwise. As Indian security agencies race to work out who was behind them they will be negotiating a maze of conflicting clues. On the face of it, the perpetrators seem obvious enough. A group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed the operation. The name indicates a local group - the Deccan is the central Indian plateau - and a probable link to the Indian Mujahideen who started a bloody bombing campaign a year ago. It is this group, too, that threatened the people of Mumbai with "deadly attacks" two months ago and have credibly claimed responsibility for the series of attacks in recent months. Their texts are full of references to early Islamic history and key thinkers who are characteristic of modern Jihadi ideology. In the local version of the global Islamist militant discourse, the Crusader-Zionist alliance has been expanded to become the Hindu-Crusader-Zionist alliance. Most ana...

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Three alleged spies who are accused of working for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency were arrested by Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported Tuesday. "Members of this network were in direct contact with Mossad," Tehran's prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, told Fars. "These individuals have received training in bombings and assassination in the cities of Herzliya and Caesarea (Israel)." The suspected spies had 17 training sessions, he said. IRGC Commander Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari told Fars on Monday that his troops had arrested members of an Israeli spy network who collected and transferred information about Iran's nuclear and military centers. The news agency said it was not clear if Jafari and Mortazavi were speaking of the same people. Jafari said more details would be forthcoming, Fars said. Last week, Iran executed a man convicted of spying for Israel, state media reported. Ali A...

The statement was a response to a televised speech by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in which he said that those behind coordinated attacks against Mumbai were based ‘outside the country’ and warned ‘neighbours’ who provide a haven to anti-India militants. Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, in New Delhi for peace talks, told the private Dawn television station that nobody should be blamed until investigations were complete. ‘Our experience in the past tells us that we should not jump to conclusions,’ Qureshi said. Qureshi said that Singh had constituted a federal investigation team to look into the attacks on luxury hotels, restaurants and the main train station in India's commercial heart, which have killed at least 100 people and injured about 300. ‘We should not go for a knee-jerk reaction,’ Qureshi said, adding he would meet Singh on Friday and express condolences, solidarity and support to him and the people of India. ‘We need to be calm, we need to be...

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25: Pakistan on Monday offered to help the international community combat the menace of piracy off the coast of Somalia and the Red sea. The offer to supplement United Nations’ efforts to combat piracy was made at a meeting between Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN Adbullah Hussain Haroon and Belgian Minister of Defence Pieter De Crem and heads of UN peace-keeping operations. They were discussing issues relating to the peacekeeping troops presently being deployed by the United Nations world over under the UN Security Council mandate. Mr Haroon offered the help of Pakistan Navy to quell piracy provided a clear mandate was given by the UN Security Council, according to a press statement issued by the Pakistan mission. He, however, made it clear that without UN-permitted involvement of the Pakistan Air Force to fly air support missions in the region from bases in the Arabian peninsula as well as financial arrangements, provision of technology, weaponry to its troops, who...

Pakistan has formally agreed to buy three Type 214 German submarines under deal worth more than $1 billion (773.7 million euros) that the two countries are expected to sign within the next few months, according to a media report on Wednesday. The German shipbuilding company Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft GmbH (HDW) will construct the diesel-electric submarines in a shipyard in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi, Pakistan's English-language daily The News reported. "The commercial contract has been finalized up to 95 percent," said Walter Freitag, the chief executive officer of the HDW, the largest conventional submarine maker in the world. Freitag, who was interviewed by the newspaper during a defense products exhibition called IDEAS 2008 in Karachi, said that once the contract is signed, the first submarine would be delivered to the Pakistan navy in 64 months, with the rest delivered in the following 12 months. Pakistan has traditionally relied on French submarin...

Zahid Hussain, in Islamabad Pakistan called for the fight against terrorism to be intensified today as terrorist attacks in Bombay threaten to escalate tension between the two South Asian nations. Amid revelations that a Pakistani boat was being searched off the Bombay coastline, President Asif Ali Zardari emphatically condemned the attacks saying they were a cowardly act. Speaking on the phone to Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Indian Congress Party, Mr Zardari said there was a greater need for a joint India-Pakistan struggle against terrorism, adding that Pakistan stood with the people of India. Pakistan, which has often been accused by India of being complicit in terror strikes on its soil, has also offered to take part in a joint investigation into the Bombay attacks. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who was in New Delhi for talks on the countries' slow-moving peace process, said his government would extend all support necessary to the Indian government. “Terrorism ...

Yirmiyahu, a recent widower shattered by his son’s death in a friendly-fire incident in Gaza, runs an obscure cultural aid mission in Kenya. Israel repels him. Daniela, Ya’ari’s wife, goes on a week’s visit to the remote archaeological dig that Yirmiyahu administers as part of the mission. Her purpose is to keep alive the memory of her dead sister — Yirmi’s wife — and to give support to the widower. A. B. Yehoshua’s intent in his new novel, “Friendly Fire,” is to make Daniela an emissary between two warring visions of the author’s country, both of them his. As spoken by Ya’ari, “friendly fire” is the official euphemism that softens a reality somewhere between tragedy and lethal bungling. Spoken by Yirmi, it is something much larger: the war, fought against the Palestinians, that mortally injures the nation that fights it. Mr. Yehoshua, Israel’s most distinguished living novelist, is a dove. But he is one who, like his fellow writers Amos Oz and Daniel Grossman, joins love for the uniqu...

By MARK MCDONALD HONG KONG — The Thai fishing trawler blasted out of the water by the Indian Navy in the Gulf of Aden last week had been taken over by pirates earlier that day, the boat’s owner said Wednesday, in a harrowing account that suggests that the sinking was a case of mistaken identity. Only one of the 16 crewmen on board is known to have survived; he reported that six or seven others had been shot dead by the Indian ship. The Indian Navy has defended its actions, noting that it fired only after being fired on. “It is to be kept in mind that the trawler was under the command of the pirates,” Reuters reported Pranab Mukherjee, India’s foreign minister, as saying Wednesday in New Delhi. “As per international law and practice followed by every country in the high seas, if the pirates do not surrender and if the ships or vessel is sunk, it is perfectly within the right as per international law,” he said. The new account came from Wicharn Sirichaiekawat, the managing director of Si...

By KIRK SEMPLE KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai bluntly rebuked NATO on Wednesday for its faltering campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda and demanded a timetable for the seven-year war here to end. Mr. Karzai’s remarks, at a news conference with the secretary general of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, reflected dwindling public support for the war here and Mr. Karzai’s own political vulnerabilities. In the United States, however, the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama is planning a significant increase in the Afghanistan war effort as it scales back the American military deployment in Iraq. “How long will this war go?” Mr. Karzai asked. “Afghanistan can’t continue to suffer a war without end.” Mr. Karzai’s comments echoed remarks he made here on Tuesday to a visiting United Nations Security Council delegation. They seemed to be part of a strategy he has adopted in recent months to appear more in control of the country and more assertive in his dealings...

TOMSK, Russia — For years, the earth in this Siberian city had been giving up clues: a scrap of clothing, a fragment of bone, a skull with a bullet hole. And so a historian named Boris P. Trenin made a plea to officials. Would they let him examine secret archives to confirm that there was a mass grave here from Stalin’s purges ? Would they help him tell the story of the thousands of innocent people who were said to have been carted from a prison to a ravine, shot in the head and tossed over? The answer was no, and Mr. Trenin understood what many historians in Russia have come to realize: Under Vladimir V. Putin, the attitude toward the past has changed. The archives that Mr. Trenin was seeking, stored on the fourth floor of a building in Tomsk, in boxes stamped “ K.G.B. of the U.S.S.R. ,” would remain sealed. The Kremlin in the Putin era has often sought to maintain as much sway over the portrayal of history as over the governing of the country. In seeking to restore Russia’s...