Al-Qaida helping LeT plot attacks, provoke conflict between India, Pak: US

WASHIGTON: Al-Qaida is providing Pakistan- based LeT with targeting information and helping them in plotting attacks in India, aimed at provoking a conflict between the two countries that would ultimately destabilise Pakistan, US defence secretary Robert Gates said.

"Al-Qaida sees using the Taliban in Pakistan and groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba as ways to destabilise Pakistan and even try to provoke a conflict between India and Pakistan that would inevitably destabilise Pakistan," Gates said.

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Gates said the US has evidence which suggest that the al-Qaida aims at destabilising Pakistan.

"We have evidence that al-Qaeda is helping them pick targets, do operational planning, helping them in their effort to try to destabilise the Pakistani government," Gates told lawmakers in response to a question.

"The other piece of this that does not include the Taliban or that -- apart from the Taliban is, we also know that al-Qaida is helping the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist group that carried out the bombings in Mumbai," he said.

Earlier, appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gates said: "al-Qieda is providing them (LeT) with targeting information and helping them in their plotting in India, clearly with the idea of provoking a conflict between India and Pakistan that would destabilise Pakistan."

Agreeing with Gates, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, said: "I certainly agree with the nexus (between al-Qaeda and the LeT), and I have watched it over the last year to two, that these groups are coming together... Secretary Gates talked about the linkage between the LeT and al-Qaida."

"It is actually not local anymore and that is an example of the collaboration that's going on with all these units. I was struck, as I'm sure you were, in Mumbai that a terrorist outfit could literally generate that kind of attack and then bring two nation-states closer to conflict. That is not an achievement lost on anyone that observed that," he said.

"Those kinds of plots continue: the ability to destabilise Pakistan, seeking those nuclear materials and weapons. It's extraordinarily dangerous," he noted.