Musharraf pledges to back India bomb probe

PAKISTAN: Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said his country would support India's probe into this week's bomb blasts in Mumbai that killed some 200 people.

"I assure (Indian) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the Pakistan government and I myself are with him in any investigation he wants to carry out", Musharraf said in an interview with Business Plus Television.

Musharraf, who has led a crackdown on Islamic militancy, said he mourned the loss of "precious lives" in the attack on the Indian financial hub's railway network on Tuesday.

"We condemn it and we are with the Indian government to investigate anything," he added.

In October 2005, Musharraf issued a similar pledge after the Indian capital New Delhi was hit by three coordinated blasts that killed 62 people.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri warned against "knee-jerk" reactions blaming his country following media reports that linked the bombing to Kashmiri extremists based in Pakistan.

But the Indian foreign ministry said it was "appalling" that Kasuri had linked the decades-old dispute over the divided region of Kashmir to the Mumbai attacks.

Islamabad, Friday, AFP