ISLAMABAD - PAKISTAN has widened its sweep against the militant group blamed for the Mumbai attacks by shuttering more of its offices and detaining another 20 people, but it ruled out extraditing any of them to India.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, under intense US pressure to move against Islamic extremists operating from Pakistani territory, said the raids showed his resolve against terrorism.
But New Delhi maintained a skeptical silence about the reported crackdown and arrest of an alleged mastermind of the Mumbai assault - which left 171 dead, pushed the nuclear-armed rivals toward war and eroded US hopes for a regional push against Al-Qaeda.
A senior Pakistani security official said on Tuesday that troops had raided at least five more offices of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan's portion of disputed Kashmir.
Security forces were acting on information gleaned from Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the alleged ringleader of the Mumbai attacks who was picked up in the same region on Sunday, the official said.
He said none of the latest 20 people detained were among those named by India as suspects in last month's attack. A Lashkar-e-Taiba official confirmed that there had been more raids on their offices, but declined to elaborate. Both sources spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Pakistani authorities have not publicly named any of those arrested. However, government and intelligence officials have said they include Lakhvi and several other members of Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Washington hopes to avert a prolonged crisis between Pakistan and India that would distract Islamabad from its already fraught efforts to counter militants along the Afghan border.
Mr Zardari insisted on Tuesday that his country was 'committed to the pursuit, arrest, trial and punishment of anyone involved' in the Mumbai attacks.
But there are doubts about the willingness and ability of Pakistan's civilian government to crack down on militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba focused on fighting Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region at a time when it already faces chronic, destabilising violence on its Western flank.
India's Foreign Ministry again declined to comment on Islamabad's latest moves.
Analysts say Pakistan helped create Lashkar-e-Taiba as a proxy force against Indian troops in Kashmir, the Himalayan territory divided between the two countries since independence in 1947 and source of two of their three wars.
Former President Pervez Musharraf banned the group and several others after an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 blamed on Lashkar-e-Taiba brought them to the brink of another conflict.
But the United States says it has continued to operate under other names and has developed links to Al-Qaeda.
Some analysts suspect Pakistan's security agencies still view Kashmiri militants as assets. However, US counter-terrorism officials say there is no evidence linking Pakistani state agencies to the Mumbai attacks.
Indian officials say the sole Mumbai attacker captured alive has told them that Lakhvi recruited him for the mission and that Lakhvi and another militant, Yusuf Muzammil, planned the operation.
Indian authorities on Tuesday released what they said were the names and Pakistani hometowns of the other nine Mumbai gunmen. It also has presented Pakistan with a list of other fugitive terror suspects and demanded their extradition.
However, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Tuesday that none of those detained so far would face justice in India.
'They are Pakistani citizens and will be dealt with according to the law of the land,' Mr Qureshi told reporters in his home city of Multan. 'No arrested Pakistani would be handed over to India.' -- AP