Source: DTN News / Telegraph.co.uk By Dean Nelson in New Delhi
(NSI News Source Info) KABUL, Afghanistan - March 4, 2010: Afghan security sources said Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant 
group behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks, carried out the suicide bomb raid which killed six Indian construction workers at a Kabul guesthouse last week.
The timing of the attack, on the day after India and Pakistan's foreign secretaries met in New Delhi for their first talks since the Mumbai attacks, appears to have been aimed at sabotaging the prospects for a new peace process between the two countries.
The talks had been marred by Indian accusations that Islamabad had failed to rein in Lashkar-e-Taiba's leaders and refused to act on evidence showing the involvement of its founder Hafiz Saeed.
India has insisted that Pakistan 'dismantle its terrorist infrastructure' as a condition for progress in any talks, while Islamabad has recently waged a successful diplomatic campaign to reduce Indian influence in Afghanistan, which it regards as a threat to its security.
Pakistan's recent successes in capturing the Taliban's main military commander and members of its leadership council are believed to have followed an understanding with the United States that Indian influence in Afghanistan would not be allowed to threaten Pakistan's interests.
Last week's attack on Indian workers followed the 2008 suicide bombing of India's Kabul embassy in which 58 were killed, and another strike on the same target, which killed 17, in 2009. The first attack was believed to have been assisted by Pakistani intelligence agents.
Saeed Ansari, spokesman for Afghanistan's Directorate of National Security, said the militants who attacked the Indian guesthouse last week were speaking Urdu, Pakistan's official language.
"We are very close to the exact proof and evidence that the attack on the Indian guesthouse ... is not the work of the Afghan Taliban but this attack was carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba network, who are dependent on the Pakistan military," he said in a television interview.
At last week's talks in New Delhi, Pakistan's foreign secretary said Islamabad remained concerned at Indian involvement in Afghanistan and accused New Delhi of arming and finding Afghanistan-based 'militants' to launch attacks on government targets in its Balochistan province.
Senior Indian security analyst B. Raman, a former member of its RAW intelligence agency, said despite this latest claim of Pakistani involvement in terror attacks on Indian interests, the new talks round between the nuclear enemies would continue.
"Afghan intelligence have good sources and I take their statement very seriously, but our prime minister Manmohan Singh is keen to keep the dialogue [with Pakistan] going," he said.
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