India seeks Pak action against Mumbai attackers

Indian premier Manmohan Singh has voiced hope that Pakistan will promise action against those behind the Mumbai terror attacks when he meets counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani, a report said yesterday.
The discussions, on the margins of the global NAM summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, will be the second high-level contact between the two sides since the Mumbai raids that killed 166 people in November.
"I do hope that after our meeting we will have a reaffirmation on the part of Pakistan that they will bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacre to justice," Singh told reporters on his way back from the G8 nations' meeting in Italy, the Press Trust of India reported.
Singh said he also hoped Islamabad would implement a five-year-old pledge not to "allow use of their (Pakistani) land to terrorist elements working against India.
"If they do that we are willing to walk more than half the distance to normalise the relations."
The Singh-Gilani meeting is to be preceded by talks between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's interior minister says the trial of five men accused in the Mumbai attacks is likely to start next week.
Rehman Malik said Saturday that the investigation into the three-day siege in Mumbai last November that killed 166 people is "almost complete."
He said five of the nine suspects have been arrested and their trial "is going to commence probably next week."
Malik rejected allegations that Pakistan had dragged its feet in the investigation.
He said "we have proved that we are serious."