Washington : The United States on Saturday asked Pakistan to conduct a ‘complete and thorough’ probe into the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base.
Briefing reporters on January 7, John Kirby, the US State Department spokesperson, said that the country was in touch with Pakistan on this issue.
“The Pakistanis (had) said they’re going to investigate, so we look forward to seeing the results of that investigation,” he said.
Acknowledging that the US’s ‘relationship with Pakistan is complicated.and we don’t always agree on everything’, he reiterated that the need for Pakistan to be ‘aggressive’ in its counter-terror operations and to ‘bring the perpetrators (of the Mumbai terror attack also) to justice.’
While refusing to get into a debate on the timeframe for Pakistan to complete the investigation into the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base, he stressed that the US would “like them to be done as quick as possible and transparently discussed when it’s complete”.
Earlier, the Pakistani Government has asked for more and ‘concrete’ evidence instead of ‘leads’ to take action against the suspects of being involved in the terrorist strike on the airbase.
India had earlier shared leads with Islamabad which mostly included intercepts of telephone calls made by the terrorists to their alleged handlers and the locations of the numbers which they had called in Pakistan.
Later, Pakistan acknowledged that they had received the leads and had begun working on them. Sharif then called Prime Minister Modi and assured him of prompt action against the guilty.
According to a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office, the meeting reviewed the progress on the information shared by India and it was decides that the matter would be continued to discuss with New Delhi.
Meanwhile, India awaits Pakistan’s formal response to the shared leads and has expressed quick action from Islamabad so that the upcoming foreign secretaries talks are not hampered.
Pathankot district was attacked by six terrorists from Pakistan on January 2. Seven security personnel were martyred and another 20 were injured in the attack. (ANI)