"I know that there's a lot of commentary about the origins of this plot. That will be known over time as the investigation continues. I'm not going to get into the details of it," department Spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.
He said, "There are people who are looking at it right now, and those are the competent authorities to address the origins and the links back wherever they may lead, whether that's in Pakistan or elsewhere."
McCormack was responding to a query on the administration's thinking of media reports on the trail of the London plot leading to Pakistan and whether it was not time to bring pressure on Islamabad to bring the terrorists to justice.
On the subject of terrorist financing, the spokesman refused to brand all charities as being involved in this act even if certain organisations had acted as "fronts" for terror outfits."
I'm not going to paint all charities with a broad brush here. There are certain organisations that have served as fronts, either wittingly or unwittingly, for terrorist organisations. And we have a lot of great people at the Department of Treasury, as well as elsewhere in the US government, that watch those things very carefully, and where they find violations of US law, we act," he said.
He added that were a number of different executive orders under which the President can act and some of the more robust ones came after September 11, 2001.
"So it is a very important function. You have to fight the war on terror on a lot of different fronts, and one of them is cutting off the lifeblood of these terrorist organisations, which is the financing," McCormack said.
On a different note the State Department Spokesman congratulated India and Pakistan on their respective Independence Days.
"As for the national days of India and Pakistan, certainly our congratulations and best wishes go out both to India as well as Pakistan." the Spokesman said.
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