NSA echoes Pillai: theres a terror-Pak agency nexus

Days after Home Secretary G K Pillai held the ISI directly responsible for guiding the 26/11 attacks the comment evoked a sharp reaction...

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Days after Home Secretary G K Pillai held the ISI directly responsible for guiding the 26/11 attacks the comment evoked a sharp reaction from Pakistan during External Affairs Minister S M Krishnas visit National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon today said that the nexus between terror groups and the official establishment was getting stronger and would not be broken soon.

Last week,Pillai,speaking at the Idea Exchange programme of The Indian Express,said: The real sense that has come out from Headleys interrogation is that the ISI was… literally controlling and coordinating it (the 26/11 attack) from the beginning till the end.

Menon seemingly endorsed this view today. Again,drawing from what Headley revealed to the Indian investigating team,the NSA chose his words carefully but made it known that this nexus was cause for worry to anyone framing counter-terror strategies.

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For us,it has been brought home most recently by what we learn from Headley which confirmed many of the things we knew before. And it is really the links with the official establishment and with the existing intelligence agencies. It is that nexus which makes it a much harder phenomenon for us to deal with… unfortunately,what we know and what we see suggests that these links or nexus would not be broken soon. If anything,it is getting stronger, said Menon at the annual Observer Research Foundation-Heritage Foundation Dialogue here.

We know what needs to be done and we also know who is responsible for terrorism… we have a much clearer picture today of the infrastructure of terrorism,the ecosystem that supports terrorism which… affects the entire world, Menon said.