Robert Blake, the Barack Obama administration's point man for South Asia, has taken strong exception to reports that the controversy over Indian investigators getting access to Lashkar operative John Coleman Headley had hijacked the India-United States strategic dialogue held last week.
The Pakistani American, found guilty of being one of the key conspirators of the horrific 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last October.
Blake, the assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian affairs, asserted that the Headley case has not even figured in the strategic dialogue meetings co-chaired by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and External Affairs Minister S M Krishna.
The senior administration official also denied that the US had strung India along for several months in terms of access to Headley, even though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had been promised access to the terror operative by President Barack Obama during their Oval Office meeting in the White House in November.
"I dispute your assertion that it took a long time," Blake said. "I mean, these are very sensitive matters. We wanted to make sure that Headley would be willing to talk and so a number of things had to be worked out. And let me just leave it at that."
But he added, "Let me just say that this in no way hijacked the strategic dialogue. This didn't even come up in the strategic dialogue."
When Blake was told that the lack of clarity in the issue had led to immense suspicion in India that the US is shielding Headley, in the wake of allegations that he's a double agent, he shot back, "Let me just say that there's been a great deal of transparency and close cooperation between our two governments."
He argued that "for obvious law-enforcement reasons, there are many things that we can't share with the press. But, again, I think we've had very good and close cooperation on this particular issue. And I think our Indian friends would confirm that."
When questions persisted over the impenetrable wall of silence over the issue, Blake defended the administration by saying, "the (access) is still going on, and it's much better not to comment on those things while such cases are ongoing."
"So, again, there's cooperation that's taking place that's very constructive between our two governments that we can't necessarily describe to the press," he added.
