India halts sport tour to Pakistan
2008-12-18

Category Cricket Nations Pakistan Nepal India City Islamabad Category Regions Regions Asia Event 2008 Mumbai Terror Attack India-Pakistan Source (AP)

NEW DELHI - India on Thursday debated tough, new anti-terror legislation drafted in the wake of the Mumbai attacks as officials called off a high-profile cricket tour to Pakistan -- a clear sign of a freeze in the peace process between the South Asian rivals.

India blames the Pakistani-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba for the attacks that killed 164 people, and nine gunmen, last month. India has ruled out military action against Pakistan, but officials have made it clear that the process to normalize ties between New Delhi and Islamabad will halt until Pakistan takes strong action.

The first casualty of this new track was India's cricket tour to Pakistan scheduled for January.

Cricket is a national obsession in both countries, with previous matches paving the way for a 2004 peace process between the two nuclear-armed nations that have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

Sport Minister M.S. Gill made the announcement in Parliament on Thursday.

"The final decision has been taken. We have got the letter from the Sports Ministry and the Ministry of External Affairs not to proceed with the tour," Rajeev Shukla, a senior official with the Indian cricket board, told reporters.

"The government has declined permission to go ahead with the tour, taking into account the recent developments in Mumbai as well as the overall circumstances prevailing at present," he said.

There was no immediate comment from Islamabad.

But Pakistan also stepped up the pressure, summoning an Indian envoy to formally complain about violations of its airspace -- an abrupt about-face after previously downplaying the alleged breaches by Indian aircraft as "technical" and not deliberate.

Indian Deputy High Commissioner Manpreet Vohra said he would pass the complaint onto his government but he noted previous Indian denials.

"Our government, after holding an inquiry, has already said that there was no airspace violation from our side, and I reiterated this stance today," Vohra told The Associated Press.

Since the attacks, Pakistan has made some arrests and shut the office of a charity believed linked to Lashkar. But Islamabad demanded Wednesday that India show evidence to back its claims that Lashkar trained and sent the gunmen, saying court prosecutions would be impossible without proof.

India, however, has said it will not share details until completing its investigation into the Nov. 26-29 attacks in India's financial capital.

Also Thursday, two Indian nationals suspected of aiding the attacks were ordered held in Mumbai police custody until Dec. 31.

Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed were jailed in the northern city of Rampur in February after an attack there on a police station.

Ansari was found with maps of the sites attacked in Mumbai, while police say Ahmed was a Lashkar operative based in Nepal who used to shepherd gunmen across India's porous borders.

"How they helped, what kind of help they gave the terrorists: This is what we have to investigate," prosecutor Eknath Dhamal told the court in seeking permission for police to hold and question the men. "Police need more time given the gravity of the crime."

The involvement of Indian nationals has been a blow to India, which has tried to portray the attacks as being entirely orchestrated from Pakistan.

The Mumbai attacks revealed glaring gaps in the nation's security systems and a shaky intelligence apparatus that missed several warning signs of the siege, which lasted for three days and paralyzed much of Mumbai.

On Thursday, legislators in the upper house of parliament, the Rajya Sabha, debated two bills seeking to remedy some of the lapses by overhauling India's legal and security systems.

One would double the number of days police can detain terror suspects before filing charges, from 90 days to 180, as well as boost their powers to conduct searches. A second bill would create the FBI-style agency.

Parliament's lower house unanimously passed both measures Wednesday.

The Congress-led government had repealed a similar law after coming to power in 2004, saying it was draconian and would unfairly target India's large Muslim minority.

But the government's top law enforcement official, Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, said the new bill would provide greater safeguards against abuse than the previous law.

The new legislation also beefs up the government's ability to go after those who fund and train terrorists by freezing bank accounts and assets, and calls for life sentences for those convicted of bankrolling attacks.

Also Thursday, India test-fired its Brahmos supersonic cruise missile, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, saying the test was carried out to check a new ship-borne launch system.

Indian naval and defense spokesmen were unavailable to confirm the launch.

New Delhi and Islamabad regularly test-fire missiles, but normally only give each other notice for long-range launches. It was not immediately clear whether India informed Pakistan ahead of the test.

The missile, designed to carry conventional warheads, has a range of 180 miles (290 kilometers.)