LeT role in 26/11 confirmed, India asks Pak to act

Pakistan has finally admitted the Lashkar-e-Toiba was behind the Mumbai terror attacks.

Even though there is no official confirmation but Pakistani Prime Ministers Office has told CNN-IBN that Lashkar-e-Toiba planned and executed 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

However, New Delhi is cautious about the admission with sources in the Ministry of External Affairs saying that India is looking for more tangible action.

The sources in Pakistani PMO said that two Lashkar operatives Zaik-ur Rehman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah have confessed to planning and executing Mumbai attacks.

Lakhvi and Shah had been picked up from a Lashkar camp near Muzaffarabad early in December. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani admitted that both Lakhvi and Shah had been detained but denied it subsequently.

Now a Wall Street Journal report quotes Pakistani security officials as saying that Shah, who heads the technology wing of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, has confessed to being one of the key planners of the 26/11 attacks.

He reportedly admitted to advising and directing the terrorists in Mumbai.

The confessions were backed by US intercepts of a phone call between Shah and one of the terrorists at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai

Earlier Pakistan's National Security Adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani hinted at the possibility of a Pakistani role to the Mumbai attacks.

"Could be…could be. I am not saying more than that because we don't have... I hate to say this we don't have proof," Durrani told CNN-IBN on Tuesday.

Now the Indian Government says there is enough evidence for Pakistan to act upon.

"What more evidence does Pakistan require than the statement of the captured terrorist and his father," Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said.

Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said, "Under the international law it is the obligation of the State of Pakistan to take action after individuals have been named. There is overwhelming evidence. We hope that the pressure of international committee will continue."

India will prefer to wait for a formal official word from Islamabad on Lakhvi and Shah. Until then it will continue to leverage diplomatic pressures on Pakistan