Pakistan intent on finding Mumbai culprits

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan is determined to bring to justice the organizers behind the militant attack on the Indian city of Mumbai, and is awaiting further information from India, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said on Saturday.

Pakistani militants killed 166 people in an attack on two luxury hotels, a railway station, a cafe and a Jewish center in Mumbai between November 26-29.

"We have sent a dossier and asked for further information," Gilani told a news conference following his return from Egypt, where he met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement summit.

"The moment we get further information certainly they'll be brought to justice."

While the Indian and Pakistani leaders agreed in Egypt that officials should meet to discuss issues, Singh said there would be no formal resumption of a peace process until Pakistan acted against the individuals and groups behind the Mumbai attacks.

Gilani said, however, that he was reassured by a shared conviction that dialogue was the only way forward.

"I personally feel that whatever the issues are, Dr. Manmohan Singh was very very clear. He said; 'I am ready to discuss all issues, whatever the issues between Pakistan and India are concerned,'" Gilani said.

BORDERLANDS

The United States would like the Pakistan army to be less preoccupied with any perceived threat from India and concentrate on destroying the Taliban and al Qaeda forces ranging across the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands.

India put on hold a peace process begun in 2004 as tensions escalated in the days after the Mumbai attacks.

Divided since their independence from British rule in 1947, India and Pakistan fought three wars before becoming nuclear weapons states in 1998, and in 2002 they went to the brink of a fourth in the wake of a Pakistani militant attack on the Indian Parliament.

Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency on Saturday submitted an investigation report on five suspects held over the Mumbai attacks, officials said.

The suspects include Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a commander in the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, and four others named as Hammad Amin, Zarar Shah, Mazhar Iqbal alias Abu al Qama and Shahid Jameel Riaz.

They are being held at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, the garrison town next door to Islamabad, where proceedings will be heard. The court is due to convene on July 25.

Aside from the five men held in custody, Information Minister Rehman Malik last week issued a list of 13 other suspects still at large.

India also wants Pakistan to act against Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, who publicly quit the militant group after Pakistan banned following the attack on the Indian parliament in late 2001. Saeed became head of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity.

He was put under house arrest in early December after a U.N. Security Council committee added him and the charity to a list of people and organizations linked to al Qaeda or the Taliban.

But a court in Lahore ordered his release on June 2, citing a lack of evidence.

The government on July 6 filed an appeal against the court decision. The Supreme Court was to convene on July 16 to hear the appeal but government lawyers requested a two week postponement.

(Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore)