Pakistan completes initial probe into Mumbai attacks

ISLAMABAD, (AFP)

Pakistan has completed a preliminary probe into the Mumbai attacks, which India says were carried out by a banned Pakistani-based group, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Friday.

The attacks, in which 10 gunmen killed 165 people in the Indian financial capital during a 60-hour siege in late November, have severely strained relations between nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan. "According to my information, a team at the federal investigation agency (FIA) has completed its preliminary investigation and sent it to the law department," Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad.

New Delhi has blamed the attacks on banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, but the organisation has denied responsibility.

India has led a major diplomatic campaign to tighten international pressure on Islamabad to crack down on militants based in Pakistan. India has said it believes the sophistication and planning involved in the attacks mean they could not have been carried out without the knowledge of Pakistani "state elements" - something Islamabad has strongly rejected.

Qureshi, who was shown making the remarks on a Pakistani television channel, spoke after Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, said Pakistani soil had not been used to plan the attacks.

"Pakistan's territory was not used so far as we know. It could have been some other place but not the UK," Hasan told India's NDTV news channel.

Qureshi said the law department would review the report and pass it on to the foreign ministry.

"We will then share it with India," he added.