Karachi, August 31(ANI): Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi felt that the 26/11 terrorist attacks in India were a result of Pakistan's flawed policy, according to a December 2008 US diplomatic cable released by whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.
The Mumbai terror siege, which drew widespread condemnation across the world, began on 26 November 2008 and lasted until 29 November, killing at least 173 people and wounding at least 308.
The US embassy cable, which has details of meetings between the then US Centcom chief General David Petraeus and Italian officials, features Berlusconi recounting that former president Pervez Musharraf had once told him that "he closed an eye" to keep peace and "now Pakistan was reaping the consequences of that choice".
"Berlusconi advocated pushing international financial institutions to help Pakistan, but only on condition that the government of Pakistan takes serious action against terrorist and extremist groups on its soil," the cable added.
Berlusconi also told Petraeus that he had talked to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari at Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's request, and had "reinforced the need to crack down on Pakistan's indigenous Taliban."
Petraeus, for his part, said that the Mumbai attacks were a '9/11 moment' for Pakistan, The Express Tribune reports.
He said that the "Zardari government now must contend with the fact that the fundamentalist movements Pakistan once nurtured and harboured now represent an existential threat to Pakistan that constitutes a greater threat than the one posed by India."
Petraeus added that Pakistan's economy was also "nearing collapse, and that it had been down to three weeks of foreign exchange before the International Monetary Fund (IMF) bridge loan." (ANI)
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