Pakistan plans trial of Mumbai attackers

Pakistan said yesterday it would "probably" put on trial this week the five accused of alleged involvement in last year's deadly terror attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai.

Relations between the two nuclear-armed rivals worsened after the siege in India's financial capital that New Delhi blamed on the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) rebel group based in Pakistan.

"The trial of the five accused, who have been arrested, is probably going to start next week," interior minister Rehman Malik told reporters in Islamabad after meeting Indian Deputy High Commissioner (Ambassador) Manpreet Vohra.

"We are pretty sure that based on the evidence which our investigators have collected, the culprits will be punished," he said.

The announcement came hours after Indian premier Manmohan Singh voiced hope that Pakistan would promise action against those behind the attacks when he meets counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani.

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".

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 166 people died in the Mumbai raids in November.

Malik said that the trial against the five accused, including the alleged mastermind Zakiduddin Lakhvi, would be "transparent".

"Investigation (on our side) is almost complete and we have collected all material evidence," he said.

The minister rejected India's criticism that Pakistan was not serious in carrying out investigations.

"We were not only serious but very serious in our investigations," he said.

The meeting between Singh and Gilani in Sharm el-Sheikh is to be preceded by talks between the foreign secretaries of the two South Asian countries.

The Mumbai siege also left a fragile peace process, launched in 2004, in tatters.

But Singh's re-election in May and a meeting between the Indian premier and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg last month have renewed hopes of a thawing in relations.

New Delhi is insistent that it will resume talks to normalise ties only after Islamabad brings to justice the alleged perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks.