The Indian government is pleased with the cooperation the United States has offered on the David Headley case, but country's media appears to be frustrated on the apparent delay in the access, a top Obama administration official said on Tuesday.
"In the Headley case, I know the people in the press have been -- particularly in India -- a bit frustrated by the delay," Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake said in response to a question at a State Department blog forum.
However, Blake said the Indian government does not share the same opinion, and is in fact satisfied with the cooperation. He said as National Security Advisor Jones confirmed over the weekend, an Indian team has been given access to Headley now.
"I think the Indian government would say that they've been very pleased with the cooperation that they've had with us," he said.
Some media reports had said that the recent Indo-US Strategic Dialogue had been overshadowed by the issue of access to Headley which took a long time.
"Obviously, we had to work through Mr Headley's lawyers and so there was a great deal of work that had to be done to ensure that there could be a productive discussion, and that's now taken place," he said.
Blake said counter-terrorism cooperation between the US and India has really been one of the new strengths of the relationship and has increased quite dramatically since the terrible Mumbai attack in November of 2008.
"Since then, we've seen quite close intelligence and also law enforcement cooperation. We have a new counterterrorism cooperation initiative."
He said the two countries are looking at new cooperation in the areas of cyber-security, which would benefit both. The State Department official said the Headley case really is symptomatic of a larger issue in Indo-US relations and indeed India-Pakistan relations, which is the growing scope of groups like Lashkar-e Tayiba and their ambition to conduct attacks not just against India but in places like the United States, possibly against US troops in Afghanistan.
"It underlines the importance of us all working together to address that threat, and also for Pakistan to take action against LeT."
"We think that this is something that really is in Pakistan's own interest to do because of the -- what the Secretary has termed kind of the syndicate that is operating now in Pakistan," Blake said.
He said some welcome progress had been seen by Pakistan in Swat and South Waziristan. "We hope that there can now be progress on this very important issue, which would have very consequential implications for India-Pakistan relations," Blake said.
