Via Asharq Al-awast -
Pakistan on Saturday withdrew an offer to send its spy chief to India to help investigate the Mumbai terrorist attacks, damaging efforts to head off a crisis between the nuclear-armed rivals.
Indian officials have linked the attacks to "elements" in Pakistan, raising the prospect of a breakdown in painstaking peace talks between South Asian rivals that has alarmed the U.S. However, Washington also kept up the pressure on Pakistan with a suspected missile strike on an al-Qaeda and Taliban stronghold near the Afghan border that reportedly killed two people.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani insisted on Friday that his country was not involved in the carnage that left more than 190 people dead in India's financial capital.
With Pakistan promising to help identify and apprehend those responsible, Gilani's office said the head of the Inter Services Intelligence agency would go to India at the request of India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh. However, Zahid Bashir, a spokesman for Gilani, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the decision had been changed and that a lower-ranking intelligence official would travel instead. He declined to explain the about-face, which followed sharp criticism from some Pakistani opposition politicians and a cool response from the army, which controls the spy agency.
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