NEW DELHI: National Security Adviser M K Narayanan held out a veiled warning of a repeat of a 26/11-type terror strike, but said the country was better prepared to deal with such a situation, having drawn lessons from the earlier attack.
He made the remarks when asked during a television interview on Saturday how seriously he was scared that there could be a second major Mumbai like strike on India. “Here you are asking me a question that I live in almost daily dread that something that I am looking at or the home minister P Chidambaram. The home minister takes a daily meeting at which I am also present and when he is not there I take that meeting.”
“We get so many pieces of intelligence which pass across our table, many you can sort of weed out, but as I said there are quite a few which if they are not able to nip it in bud can turn dangerous. However, it is difficult to say whether we will have another Mumbai because I think we are better prepared perhaps for that kind of situation, but it could be quite serious.”
Mr Narayanan’s concerns come within days of a warning from Israel’s counter-terror unit about jihadi outfits planning to carry out more attacks across India, especially at sites with a large concentration of Western and Israeli tourists. It suggested the strikes could be orchestrated by Lashker-e-Toiba, which had attacked Mumbai. The travel advisory said the warning was based on a “concrete and very serious threat” to Israelis in India. A leaked copy of the advisory said the potential attackers had Al Qaeda links.
A week ago, the US issued a travel advisory cautioning its citizens about the possibility of terrorist attacks in India during the festival season as well as the period surrounding the commemoration of the September 11 terror attacks.
Asked if Pakistan scared him, Mr Narayanan said: “Pakistan may not scare me, but some of Pakistan’s actions scare us, because I don’t think this really adds to anything except creating problems for us.” He said Pakistan’s FIR against Hafiz Saeed did not add any credibility to its commitment to act against the Mumbai accused. Mr Narayan’s view is apparently not in sync with that of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who on Friday hailed the Pakistani police’s action against Saeed as a “good step”.
“If you take the Saeed dossier that has been provided to Pakistan, I think we have marshaled what I would call Grade 1 evidence. You have the evidence from three people, three human beings, three admittedly terrorists — Kasab, Fahim Ansari, Soharabuddin — who talked of what Saeed had talked to them, what he had said, etc. This is apart from other connecting evidence. I agree one can never be assure what a court would do with that kind of evidence, but if you are not even willing to test that it certainly leaves in our mind a big question mark about where Pakistan stands on terrorism,” Mr Narayanan said.
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