Raids on militants show Pakistan's intent: Zardari

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has arrested militants following several raids to show its intent to hunt down anyone who was behind the attack on the Indian city of Mumbai that killed at least 171 people, President Asif Ali Zardari said.

"As was demonstrated in Sunday's raids, which resulted in the arrest of militants, Pakistan will take action against the non-state actors found within our territory, treating them as criminals, terrorists and murderers," Zardari wrote in an article published on The New York Times' website on Tuesday.

India has pressed Pakistan to take action, or risk deepening a crisis in relations between the two nuclear-armed states.

Islamabad has promised to cooperate in the investigation but has vowed that anyone caught in Pakistan would be tried there.

The tensions have already put a four-year-old peace process in jeopardy, and the United States has advised India to act with restraint while saying the onus was on Pakistan to take action against any groups involved in last month's Mumbai attack.

Zardari did not name the location of the raids or who had been arrested, and a military spokesman also declined to say.

Among those being held was one of the men who Indian officials say controlled the 10 gunmen sent from Pakistan to carry out the attack, according to an intelligence official and militant-linked sources.

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, an operations chief of Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, was caught during a raid on Sunday by security forces on one of the jihadi organization's camps in the hills outside Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

Reuters has not confirmed any other raids, but a Pakistani daily reported on Tuesday that the offices of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity, widely regarded as a front for Lashkar, were targeted.

The News said arrests were made and records seized during raids on the charity in the Mansehra and Chakdra districts of North West Frontier Province.

NO HANDING OVER

Whether Pakistan's action will satisfy India is uncertain.

"Those who are Pakistani, there is no question of handing them over to India," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi reiterated to journalists in Multan city, in the central province of Punjab.

"And if any allegations are proved against them, Pakistan has its own laws, Pakistan has its own courts and its own regulations and action will be taken against them within these regulations."

Several jihadi groups that have sprung out of Punjab to fight Indian rule in Kashmir have had ties with Pakistani intelligence in the past, analysts say, raising apprehension over whether any investigation would be transparent.

The News also reported that Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad group and one of the most wanted men in India, had also been detained, but there was no official word.

Jaish and Lashkar were blamed for the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001, which almost caused a fourth war between the uneasy neighbors.

Both organizations have been banned by Pakistan and Azhar and Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar who now heads the JuD charity, both have been detained from time to time.

Zardari was adamant that militants had nothing to do with the Pakistani state.

"Not only are the terrorists not linked to the government of Pakistan in any way, we are their targets and we continue to be their victims," he said in The New York Times article.

"The best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism," he wrote.

He said nearly 2,000 Pakistanis had been killed in militant-related violence this year alone, including 1,400 civilians and 600 security personnel.

As the Muslim nation celebrated the Eid al-Adha festival on Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up and wounded three children in the Buner district of North West Frontier Province.

(Additional reporting by Asim Tanveer in MULTAN and Augustine Anthony in ISLAMABAD; Editing by Paul Tait)