India military pushes for attack on terrorist headquarters

The Australian:

PAKISTAN was bracing last night for a retaliatory airstrike by India against the sprawling headquarters of the al-Qa'ida-linked Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist organisation near Lahore.

As Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari warned the LET militants "had the power to precipitate war in the region", India demanded that Islamabad hand over a list of about 20 people, including India's most-wanted man Dawood Ibrahim.

India's military chiefs were exerting strong pressure on the country's political leaders to give permission to attack the headquarters, an 80ha site at Muridke, close to the Punjab capital of Lahore, just across the border from India.

The reports came as the Indian Government summoned the Pakistani high commissioner in New Delhi yesterday to demand "strong action" against the Pakistani militants who it says were responsible for last week's attacks on Mumbai.

New Delhi warned Shahid Malik that India expected Islamabad to take "swift action" to deal with the evidence of involvement by LET operating from bases inside Pakistan.

India demanded that Islamabad extradite Ibrahim, a fugitive Mumbai mafia don who it believes has links to LET, the terrorist group long allied to Pakistan's ISI spy agency.

India also asked for Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the LET founder, and Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, who was freed in exchange for passengers on a hijacked Indian Airlines flight in 1999.

Ibrahim, Mumbai's most notorious underworld don, is the head of D-Company, a feared crime syndicate, and one of the world's five most wanted men. He is widely believed to have worked closely with al-Qa'ida. He is also thought to have masterminded the 1993 Mumbai bombings, a series of 13 explosions that claimed 250 lives.

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I did not realize that LET was operating so openly since the group was outlawed in 2001. I think the likelihood of an air attack are remote right now, when there is still a chance that Pakistan may agree to pick up some of the terrorist. The minimum that Pakistan usually does to get out of pressure like this is growing still. It is better to keep that pressure on and save the air attacks as consequences for failure to cooperate.