Islamabad, December 21
In a tough message to Pakistan, the US has said it was not satisfied with what Islamabad had done so far for eradicating terrorism from its soil after the Mumbai attack, not an ordinary event that could be “swept under the carpet”.

The message was conveyed by top American officials to Pakistani national security adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani, who was summoned to Washington as the US government was “getting increasingly frustrated with what it viewed as Islamabad’s shifty and shifting position on the Mumbai attacks and their aftermath,” a Pakistani daily reported.

Durrani yesterday concluded his unannounced three-day US visit during which he met secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, his American counterpart Stephen Hadley and Pentagon officials.

In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice said on Wednesday that what Pakistan had done so far to catch those responsible for the Mumbai attacks was not enough.

She said her message to the Pakistani leadership was “...you need to deal with the terrorism problem. And, it's not enough to say these are non-state actors. If they're operating from Pakistani territory, then they have to be dealt with.”

A senior diplomatic source familiar with the talks said: "The curt message that Durrani and the Pakistani team received from the Americans was: this is not 2002 and you cannot do what President (Pervez) Musharraf did after 9/11...In the past, you swept everything under the carpet while the problems were allowed to fester. No more.” The US officials “insisted that they had enough evidence to prove that Lashker-e-Toiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawah were involved in the Mumbai attacks and they wanted concrete action against all such groups”, the official said. The Pakistani embassy in Washington kept Durrani’s visit tightly under wraps and did not tell journalists about his arrival or the reason for his visit.

US officials were dismayed by such statements as the one that said Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar had left the country after it had been officially announced that he was under house arrest, the source said. — PTI