ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan's prime minister has downplayed the significance of an Indian dossier on the Mumbai attacks, saying it only contained information and "not evidence," state media reported.
Yousuf Raza Gilani's remarks late Tuesday before Parliament were likely to anger New Delhi, which says the dossier provides evidence that Pakistani militants staged the November slaughter of 164 people. India specifically blames Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group believed to have links to Pakistani intelligence.
Pakistan only recently acknowledged that the only surviving Mumbai gunman was Pakistani, but it insists none of its state agencies played a role in the attacks. Under international pressure, Pakistan has detained some suspects allegedly linked to the attacks, while repeatedly calling on India to provide evidence to allow legal prosecutions.
"All that has been received from India is some information. I say information because these are not evidence," Gilani said, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan.
The dossier, handed over on Jan. 5, includes transcripts of phone calls allegedly made during the siege by the attackers and their handlers in Pakistan. Previously, India had given Pakistan a letter from the lone surviving gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, that reportedly said he and the nine other gunmen were Pakistani.
In his statement, Gilani said Pakistan was continuing to examine the dossier.
He also urged "pragmatic cooperation" between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, who have already fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.
On Wednesday, gunmen riding on a motorcycle fired on a vehicle carrying police officers near the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta in Pakistan's southwest Baluchistan province, killing four, said Mohammed Ishtiaq, an area police chief. Police were still investigating the motive for the shooting.
Baluchistan has long been the scene of a low-level insurgency, with militant groups seeking greater regional autonomy and a larger share of revenue from its natural resources.
In a separate incident there Wednesday, a roadside bomb critically wounded seven paramilitary troops in Dera Bugti district, some 310 miles (500 kilometers) east of Quetta, said Muhammad Ashfaq, a senior police official.
Sarbaz Baluch, a purported spokesman for the Baluch Republican Army, one of the main militant groups in the province, said the group staged the attack out of revenge after a large portrait of a slain nationalist Baluchi leader was removed from the area.
He claimed that four troops were killed and six wounded.
