New Delhi
25 March 2010
A visiting US official described the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) as a terrorist
organisation with global reach, which not only has a lot more men under arms than Al-
Qaeda but harbours ambitions to fill the gap left by Al-Qaeda.
"We in the US entirely believe that any group that may have a humanitarian wing as well
as, well, political wing as well as a terrorist wing, is entirely a terrorist group[.] We feel
that way emphatically about [LeT] and its social services wing the Jamaat-ud-Dawa'h,"
Dan Benjamin, the US State Department's counter-terrorism coordinator said here.
He was replying to a question from the audience towards the end of the panel discussion
on transnational terrorism, organised as part of an international conference at the Indian
Council of World Affairs here on Thursday.
"I have said that we will not achieve our security aims if [LeT is active.] In fact, one of the
central challenges [is] to figure out how we pre-empt [such] groups," Mr Benjamin said,
in remarks which came days after the LeT vowed to step up jihad to liberate Kashmir.
He also spoke about raising India-US counter-terrorism cooperation to a more strategic
level so that both sides can share best practices and collaborate on issues such as
border control, maritime security, terrorist financing and intelligence-sharing.
Mr Benjamin held bilateral talks with Indian officials during his five-day stay here. He
also chaired a meeting of American ambassadors, generals and other senior officials to
review the situation in South Asia. The bilateral discussions took place amid anxiety
here over the US attitude towards Pakistan, made worse in recent times by its reluctance
to part with information about the 26/11 plot that would have exposed Pakistan's
duplicity.
In his address to the conference, Bernd Mutzelburg, Germany's special representative
for Afghanistan and Pakistan, noted that the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks did not
want rapprochement between India and Pakistan.
"... this was not just the aim of LeT. This was also the aim of those where behind the
LeT," he said taking the name of ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency.
Mr Mutzelburg said Pakistan's desire to retain Afghanistan in its sphere of influence is
"not acceptable", and he pushed for regional cooperation that will take on board the
legitimate interests of countries such as India, Iran, Russia and China.
He asserted that the real threat in Afghanistan is not Al-Qaeda, but the Taliban
insurgency and the attempts to create a fundamentalist, theocratic caliphate.
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