United States vice president-elect Joe Biden will lead a bipartisan Congressional delegation on a visit to Southwest Asia before he takes office alongside Barack Obama on January 20. For security reasons, details of the trip and the countries to be visited have not been released. Biden would be accompanied by Senator John Kerry, the former Democratic Presidential candidate and the incoming Chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Two weeks ahead of his inauguration, United States President-elect Barack Obama's incoming cabinet faced a hiccup when Commerce Secretary-designate Bill Richardson withdrew citing an ongoing federal grand jury investigation
Former chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission Dr M R Srinivasan said India's nuclear reactors, spread along the country's coastline, are secure against the threat of terrorist strikes.
Retired Vice Admiral P S Das said the methodology of 26/11 clearly indicated that the terrorists had received months of professional training, most likely from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence.
At a seminar in Washington, DC, a group of former diplomats, military leaders, politicians, businessmen and others said the minimum requirement from Pakistan is 'an irrevocable disbandment of the infrastructure of terrorism.'
At a seminar in Washington, DC, the consensus among a high-profile group of former diplomats, military leaders, politicians, businessmen and others was that the Mumbai terror attacks was a tangible manifestation of a global threat that calls for a global response.
Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh contributed anywhere from $1 to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, and so did industrialist Lakshmi Mittal, chief executive of ArcelorMittal, according to information released by the non-profit organisation set up by the former President Bill Clinton to fund a variety of charitable activities around the world, including combating the scourge of HIV/AIDS.
'This is something the ISI would have wanted to prevent. There was no direct ISI involvement whatsoever,' claims American national security expert Harlan Ullman, who has close links with the Pakistani government and military.
If Pakistan continues to dilly-dally in bringing the perpetrators to justice and closing down the terrorist camps that operate within its borders, influential US lawmaker Ed Royce says he will lead the fight in the United States Congress to cut the massive military and security assistance to Pakistan.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and the Afghanistan expert at the much-respected Washington think-tank, has said that the United States is urging India to exercise restraint against perhaps launching punitive attacks against Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks. It should convince India that Washington's concerns are genuine and not governed by its own vested interest vis-a-vis its global war on terror.
Billionaire S P Hinduja believes the 'whole world has awakened to this evil of terrorism' because of the Mumbai attacks. He said he was especially glad that the attacks 'have mobilised our youth like never before.'
Powell, who agreed that there were similarities between the Mumbai attacks and the attack in December 2001 when the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad had launched attacks on the Indian Parliament, said at the time Islamabad had promised to completely eliminate and dismantle these terrorist networks, and was surprised to find that seven years later they were still very much alive and thriving.
United States Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said the absence of an operational incident manager -- as was developed in the US after the 9/11 attack -- clearly was a major problem during the Mumbai terror attacks, where there was a glaring lack of coordination between various departments and agencies.
Close on the heels of the United States Senate, the US House of Representatives, in a bipartisan resolution, has strongly condemned the 'senseless and barbaric terrorist attacks' in Mumbai. The House also expressed its sympathy for the 'innocent victims from India and around the world'.The House resolution was pproved unanimously, and co-sponsored by over 50 members from both sides of the aisle -- Democrats and Republicans.
The US Senate has unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution introduced by Senators Bob Casey, Pennsylvania Democrat and George Voinovich, Ohio Republican -- both members of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- condemning the terrorists attacks in Mumbai and applauding India's restraint so far as it investigates the attacks.
'This is the basic mistake in our methodology of tackling terrorism -- there is no intelligence integration, there is no operational coordination.'
Los Angeles Police Department Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Commanding Officer Michael P Downing will lead a small delegation, including executive, investigative, and tactical officers to Mumbai, 'to learn, observe, and bring back best practices to LAPD,' and to disseminate to other major cities to help guard against Mumbai-like terrorist attacks on American soft targets.
Notwithstanding Pakistan's claim that its security forces have arrested Lashkar-e-Tayiba commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, suspected to be the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, along with several other key LeT terrorists, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Washington and US intelligence are still to confirm the veracity of these claims.
"What I am going to restate is a basic principle. Number one, if a country is attacked, it has the right to defend itself. I think that is universally acknowledged," Obama asserted. "The second thing is that we need a strategic partnership with all the parts in the region -- Pakistan and India and the Afghanistan government -- to stamp out militant, violent, terrorist extremists."
'I don't see any relationship between them and ex-army or ex-ISI as has been happening in the past,' says strategic analyst Shuja Nawaz, who is convinced the Pakistan army and its intelligence wing, the Inter-Services Intelligence, are not complicit in the Mumbai terror attacks.
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