Claiming that ‘thousands of our well-armed militants are ready to fight alongside the army if any war is imposed on Pakistan’, chief of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud, told The News daily by phone from an undisclosed location.

Hundreds of would-be bombers had been ‘given suicide jackets and explosive-laden vehicles for protection of the border in case of any aggression by the Indian forces’, he said.

‘The time had come, to wage a real jihad that the Taliban had been waiting for,’ Mehsud, for whom the Pakistani and US forces are on the look out claimed.

‘We know very well that the visible and invisible enemies of the country have been planning to weaken this lone Islamic nuclear power. But the mujahideen will foil all such nefarious designs of our enemies,’ he said.

This is for the first time Mehsud has admitted that Taliban has marshalled thousands of fighters close to the Afghan-Pak border and where Pakistani army has launched a major operation to flush them out.

Mehsud said people might question how the Taliban would fight alongside the Pakistan Army when the militants had been fighting the force for a long time.
‘Therefore, I want to make it clear that the army was acting otherwise (in the past). But now it would fight for the protection and survival of the country, which is why we will support them,’ Mehsud said.

Mehsud, who was accused by former President Pervez Musharraf [Images] of masterminding the assassination of Pakistan People’s Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto [Images] in December last year, significantly said the Taliban would defend the country’s frontier with Afghanistan in the event of hostilities with India.

He said he wanted to ‘assure the nation, government and army that they should not worry about Pakistan’s western borders with Afghanistan’ as ‘thousands of his armed fighters had already been deployed to safeguard the strategically important frontier’.

Taliban fighters are ready to fight under the army’s command, he said, but remarked it would be better for the military to ‘give them a separate sector or specify special targets for the militants’.

Tensions have escalated in the region after India blamed Pakistan-elements for the Mumbai terror attacks [Images], which killed over 180 people. India has asked Pakistan to take action against elements, including the Lashkar-e-Tayiba [Images] terror group.

Though India has said war is not an option, Pakistan’s top leaders, including Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani [Images], have said the country is prepared to face any aggression on the eastern border. Several Taliban commanders have pledged their support to the Pakistan Army in the event of hostilities with India.

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This is s copy of article printed on rediff.com: December 16 2008

American investigators who questioned Ajmal Amir Iman Kasab [Images], the lone terrorist captured during the Mumbai attack, are convinced he is a Pakistani national and that the terrorist strike was planned and executed by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.

Investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation were given access to Kasab for nine hours and after questioning him, they came to the conclusion that he was a Pakistani national as contended by Indian authorities, the sources told PTI.

The sources, familiar with the probe being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s team dispatched to Mumbai, said American investigators were also convinced that the Mumbai attacks were intricately planned and directed by LeT leaders based in Pakistan.

“The investigators believe the attacks were planned, coordinated and directed from Pakistan by LeT leaders,” a source said.

These findings fit in with comments by top American leaders like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice [Images] and Admiral Mike Mullen, the senior-most US military official, who have asked Pakistan to take quick action against ‘non-state actors’ based on Pakistani soil who were linked to the Mumbai attacks.

Though Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani [Images] has ruled out allowing the British police to quiz the suspects Pakistan had detained in connection with the Mumbai attacks, the diplomatic sources said it would be hard pressed to take such a stance if the FBI made a similar request, as India had already given American investigators access to Kasab.

The diplomatic sources also provided other details of the FBI investigation that had convinced the US of the complicity of the LeT in the terrorist strike.

American investigators were able to extract details of calls made by the terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks to their LeT handlers in Pakistan by using sophisticated Technology, to examine the burnt and damaged mobile phones of the attackers, the sources said.

These phones, which were damaged in gun battles between the terrorists and security forces, were provided to the FBI team by Indian law enforcement agencies, they said.

The US dispatched an investigating team to Mumbai as six Americans were among the 183 people killed in the attacks.

Kasab was captured shortly after he and another terrorist struck at a major railway terminus in India’s financial hub.

Indian officials said he was a member of the LeT and belonged to Faridkot village in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Kasab’s father subsequently admitted to a Pakistani newspaper that the gunman whose pictures were beamed around the world by the media was his son.

Other residents of Faridkot have said that Kasab last visited the village about five to six months ago, when he told his mother he was going away for ‘jehad’.

The Pakistan government has said it is awaiting information and evidence from India to confirm the identity and nationality of Ajmal.

The sources also said the FBI investigators had found no evidence of linkages between the 26/11 attacks and the Inter Services Intelligence.

Such an act cannot be connected to any religion. Such henious acts are carried out by missionaries to trouble mankind. In ancient times such beings were called demons. Terrorists are aliving example of demons.

They are enemies of mankind as whole. They do not belong to any religion.