Thaindian News

By Arun Kumar
Washington, June 2 (IANS) Even as a team of investigators from India is in Chicago to interrogate Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley, it was not clear what kind of access it would get to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative who helped plan the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack.

Both US and Indian officials were tight-lipped about the modalities and timing of access to Headley, with US ambassador to India Timothy Roemer cryptically suggesting that both countries have been “burning the midnight oil” and “working our fingers to the bones” to resolve the issue.

Expressing the hope that Indian investigators will “soon” get to quiz Headley, who pleaded guilty in March to a dozen federal terrorism charges in a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty, Roemer said President Barack Obama “is extremely interested in resolving this.”

“And our government is very interested in resolving this,” Roemer, who is here to attend the inaugural ministerial level India-US Strategic Dialogue, told reporters at a reception hosted by the US-India Business Council.

The four-member team from India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) wants to know more about a trip Headley 49, the son of a Pakistani father and American mother, made to India in March 2009, when he conducted surveillance of sites that included the National Defence College in New Delhi and Chabad Houses in several cities.

This will be for the first time that Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006 to hide his Muslim and Pakistani origin as he scouted targets in Mumbai, will be facing direct questions from Indian investigators since his arrest last October.

“This is symbolic, I think, in many ways of how close we are working together, shoulder-to-shoulder and hand-in-hand, trying to make sure that both our countries and people are better protected, sharing intelligence in the middle of the night and hopefully saving lives doing that,” Roemer said.

He said he was hopeful that the “interview with Mr. Headley will take place soon” and it is “symbolic of this extraordinary cooperation between these two great countries on counter-terrorism issues.”

“Because this (Headley case) is such an important thing to India, to the people of India, to the government of India because this is so symbolic, because we recognise Headley’s role in the Mumbai attacks, we are working burning the midnight oil and working to make this happen soon,” Roemer said.

“I do not want to comment on how long it would last, nor precisely on the timing, only to say that that cooperation has been going on for months for direct access (to Headley), the Indian and the US intelligence have been sharing (information) and briefing each other,” the envoy said.

The US government, starting from the very top, including President Obama, recognises how important is the issue of access to Headley, he said. “He (Obama) told our government to work on this and make this happen and that’s what we have been doing,” he said.

“We are working our fingers to the bone, burning the midnight oil, trying to make sure that this does happen and both the direct and indirect accesses are important for the Indian people. We are working very hard on both. It very much shows how important, how historic and how rich this relationship is,” Roemer said.

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