Nawaz Sharif said Mumbai Attackers were Pakistani: WikiLeaks

WASHINGTON: One of the cables released by WikiLeaks reveals that former premiere Nawaz Sharif believed that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai on November 26, 2008, were Pakistani in origin.

According to a cable leaked by WikiLeaks, a US official claimed that one of the terrorists spoke in a Pakistani accent.
The cable (181951: confidential) sent by Acting Principal Officer Clinton Taylor of the U.S. Consulate in Lahore on December 9, 2008, describes how the Pakistan Muslim League (N) leader told a visiting delegation of US Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham that he had listened to the phone call made by one of the attackers to an Indian TV channel, and even though the individual claimed he was Indian, he had heard a Pakistani accent.
Although, Nawaz Sharif later refused claims that the terrorists were from Pakistan, at the December 6 meeting, he showed no signs of being in doubt of their Pakistani origins.
“The people involved were from this country – I am convinced,” Mr. Sharif is quoted as saying. “We must take strictest action against those elements.” Once India produced concrete evidence, “we should proceed whole hog,” he declared.
Nawaz Sharif was perhaps trying to stay in the good books of US and in doing so securing his prospects as a future leader of the country.
Further cementing his image as a secular and fair politician, he also told the senators that his party had acted responsibly with the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to fight terrorism.