Home Ministry team to visit Pakistan soon

NEW DELHI: A Home Ministry delegation will visit Pakistan very soon to set the terms of reference for a Pakistani Judicial Commission which will tour India to cross examine four witnesses of Mumbai terror case.

"India will send a delegation which will set the terms of reference for second Judicial Commission to come to India. That team will come on Tuesday and I will clear it within 24 hours. If it happens in a week, ten days....probably in the first week of January, the Commission will visit India," Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said.

He was delivering a lecture at Observer Research Foundation here.

Later, a Home Ministry official said the date for the visit has not been fixed yet but the team will go "very soon".

Pakistan has been maintaining that to take forward the 26/11 case in a Rawalpindi court to its logical conclusion, four witnesses of the case living in India needed to be cross examined by a Judicial Commission.

A Pakistani Judicial Commission had visited Mumbai in March but was not allowed to cross examine the witnesses. However, New Delhi has now agreed to the Islamabad's request.

"Once the Commission visits India, I am very hopeful that in a very short span of time, the case will be concluded. Our sincerity and will should not be doubted. We will leave no stone unturned and there will be special attention from my side," he said.

Malik said after the Commission's visit, based on available evidence, "irrefutable evidence" that Pakistani investigators collected, the guilty will be convicted and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would be able to visit Pakistan.

"Peace process must continue. Talks between the two countries must go on," he said.