No proof of Lakhwi`s arrest, says US officials

New York, Dec 10 (PTI) Expressing scepticism over Pakistan's claim that it has arrested Lashkar-e-Taiba operation leader Zaki ur-Rehaman Lakhwi, US counterterrorism officials have said that they were yet to have proof of capturing the Lashkar commander, a media report said Wednesday.

"In the past when they've promised to move against these guys, they'd pick up one or two of them and then several months later, they'd release them," a senior American official who has dealt with Pakistani authorities for several years was quoted as saying by the New York Times.

"Based on past patterns, we shouldn't expect much of
this," an unnamed official told the paper.

Pakistan had said yesterday that during a raid at a camp
outside Muzaffarabad on Sunday, it had arrested Lakhwi, who is
suspected to be the mastermind of the Mumbai terror attacks.

But a senior American official told the Times that there
was no independent proof of his capture and it was not clear
whether the Lashkar members the Pakistanis claimed they had
rounded up Monday were fighters or senior commanders.

Though publically the Bush administration praised the
Pakistani efforts, questions remained about how far the
Pakistani government would rein in the groups, which have
functioned as an arm of Pakistan's military and intelligence
services for two decades, the Times said.

Details of what the government had actually done so far
remained unclear, the paper noted.

An important sign of whether Pakistan was serious in
shutting down Lashkar would be if the group were demobilised
by the government, and its fighters given alternative
employment, experts on jihadist groups said.

After the ban in 2002, the United States and Britain
tried to persuade Pakistan to demobilise the fighters but
failed to do so, the experts said.

Instead, thousands of members were rounded up and then
quietly released. They were directed to slow down their
activities in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir but
were allowed to transfer their assets to Pakistan's tribal
areas where some Lashkar members have worked alongside the
Pakistani Taliban, the diplomats were quoted as saying.

Administration officials were quoted as saying they were
watching India's reaction to Pakistan's words and deeds to
gauge whether the raids and arrests would ease tensions
between the two countries.

"There's a practical part of this — will these arrests
lead to preventing further attacks and bringing people to
justice," a senior administration official told the paper,
adding, "and there's a political dimension — to what extent
does this lower tensions between the two countries."

Pakistani officials, the Times noted, have indicated in
the past few days that there were no plans for a large-scale
crackdown on LeT, founded in the 1980s by the Pakistani Army
to fight a proxy war against India in Kashmir.

Such a crackdown would run counter to popular sentiment
and would appear to be at the behest of India and the United
States, a politically unpalatable perception for Pakistan's
government, it said.

Since the start of the current roundup of Lashkar
members, the group's founder Hafiz Muhammed Saeed has not been
arrested, the paper noted, pointing out that he remains at his
headquarters in Lahore where he gave sermon at Friday prayer
last week.

Saeed now calls himself the leader of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the
charity that is Lashkar's parent, the Times said.

So far, the charity, which runs more than 100 Islamic
schools and has hundreds of thousands of adherents, the
experts on jihadist groups say, has remained untouched by the
authorities, the report said. PTI