India to ask for access to Headley, Rana

Washington, Nov. 22: Even though India is being kept fully updated on the ongoing investigations into the role played by David Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana in 26/11, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, will ask that India be given formal access to the two terror suspects when he meets US President Obama on Tuesday while seeking to bring final closure to the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Dr Singh, who arrived in Washington on Sunday ahead of a packed four-day schedule that will see him set out India’s agenda at an hour-long lecture organised jointly at the Council on Foreign Relations together with Brookings Institute, is expected to raise India’s concerns over Pakistan as the international nursery of terror when he meets the US President.

As Pakistan steps up its US-backed attacks on Taliban strongholds in North Waziristan, India’s alarm that US disbursement of aid to Islamabad that is essentially a payment for services rendered, will fall into the wrong hands, as well as fears that Pakistan’s nuclear assets could also be taken over by the Al Qaeda-Taliban network, will be high on Dr Singh’s agenda. It also dovetails neatly into concerns raised by elements within the Obama administration which has willy-nilly allocated over a billion dollars in aid to Pakistan, albeit with strings attached.

Sources indicated that India would also bring up the manner in which Lashkar-e-Tayyaba founder and 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed, is “roaming around Pakistan like a free-range chicken”, with the growing disappointment over Pakistan’s lack of cooperation over 26/11 and persistent disinformation on the fate of Ilyas Kashmiri casting a shadow over any plans for an Indo-Pak one-to-one on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit in Trinidad and Tobago in the coming week.

Dr Singh is hoping he will be able to take home a much bigger prize — one of his biggest foreign policy successes with the Bush administration, the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement — will be backed fully by the Obamaites, rather than get half-hearted endorsement it has received so far.