The official acknowledgment by Islamabad that Ajmal Amir ‘Kasab’ is its citizen is a positive development. It can serve as a new starting point for the Pakistan government to begin investigations on the leads provided by Kasab, the only survivor among the ten terrorists who attacked Mumbai, and other evidence handed over by India in a comprehensive dossier. But whether the civilian regime led by the Pakistan People’s Party is prepared to undertake this task is yet unclear. The official confirmation of the gunman’s nationality did not come voluntarily. Confronted by a report on Pakistan’s upstanding Dawn News television, which quoted a “high-ranking” official as saying that investigations had confirmed Kasab as a Pakistani, the first reaction from both the Foreign Ministry and the Interior Ministry was: ‘too early to say anything on this.’ Meanwhile, the Minister of Information came clean. It was only then that the Foreign Office was forced to reverse what it had said a couple of hours earlier. What gives a clue to the future is Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani’s decision to dismiss his National Security Adviser, the retired Major-General Mahmud Ali Durrani, seen as the source of the Dawn News report. Even before the government issued a formal statement on the dismissal, Mr. Gilani telephoned Geo Television to denounce Maj-Gen Durrani for bringing a “bad name” and causing “embarrassment” to Pakistan. (Full Story)