Global jihadis may target India: Gates

NEW DELHI: The US on Friday warned that transnational jihadists, who are coordinating their terror plans, could target India. In a testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, US defence secretary Robert Gates said Al-Qaeda is providing information and giving other logistical support to LeT to launch terror attacks in India.

Mr Gates testimony has not come as a surprise to New Delhi, which is aware of these cross-linkages and has warned the US against allowing Islamabad to continue with its selective targeting of the terror infrastructure.

The US defence secretary also warned that the terror cooperation between the two groups was aimed at provoking a conflict between India and Pakistan. “Al-Qaeda 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,” Mr Gates told the Senate committee.

Mr Gates also reiterated the LeT-Al-Qaeda linkage in a testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, where he said Al-Qaeda is using Taliban to destabilise Pakistan and groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba to provoke an Indo-Pak conflict.

Concurring with Mr Gates, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen revealed in his testimony that the linkages between the two terror groups had occurred in the last two years. “I certainly agree with the nexus (between Al-Qaeda and LeT), and I have watched... that these groups are coming together.

Mr Mullen maintained that the collaboration between the groups showed that the problem was not locally restricted. “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,” he said. The US focus on the LeT is an important development for India, which has been the target of numerous attacks by the terror group, nurtured for years by the Pakistani establishment as part of its state terror policy. Even now reports suggest that the linkages are intact.