Thaindian News

Washington, June 3 (IANS) The United States may provide access to Pakistani American David Headley after the ongoing trial of his long time friend, Pakistan-born Canadian Tahawwur Rana, for helping in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

Rana is under trial in a Chicago Federal court for allegedly providing support to Pakistan based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for the attacks by giving Headley cover of his immigration business to scout targets in Mumbai.

“Moving forward, I think we would look for or consider further access,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters Thursday when asked about Homeland such an assurance by Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to India.

“Just that, as Secretary Napolitano said (during her visit to India) last week, we can’t get into too much detail about the ongoing case in Chicago,” he said.

“But in the past we’ve given India full access to Headley, and I think that when a case is in litigation it’s impossible to do that. But moving forward, I think we would look for or consider further access,” Toner said

The spokesman declined to confirm if US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during her recent visit to Islamabad, had handed a list of terrorists to Pakistan or if Ilyas Kashmiri, commander of the Pakistani-based terrorist organisation Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI) was on such a list.

“I think I’d just say that the Secretary had very constructive meetings while she was in Pakistan, and there was broad agreement that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan has yielded results in the past and that it’s in both our interests to work even more diligently in the future,” he said.

“I don’t know what list you’re referring to,” he said when asked if Kashmiri was on the list. “I’m not going to confirm there’s some list, no.”

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)