UN declares Pakistan charity a terrorist front

Pakistan was under pressure today to clamp down on an Islamic charity after the UN declared it a front for the group blamed for the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

A Security Council panel declared Jamaat-ud-Dawa a terrorist group linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and subject to UN sanctions including an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.

However, the charity’s hard-line Islamist chief denied that it was involved in terrorism and denounced the UN’s move as an attack on religious groups.

“If India or the US has any proof against Jamat-ud-Dawa, we are ready to stand in any court. We do not beg, we demand justice,” Hafiz Mohammed Saeed said.

He said the group would petition the UN as well as national and international courts to overturn the UN decision.

A crackdown on Jamaat-ud-Dawa would underpin the promise by Pakistan to pursue those responsible for the Mumbai attacks, which left 171 dead.

But Islamabad complains that India has not shared evidence from its investigation of the attack, underlining the mistrust hampering US efforts to avert a deeper crisis between the countries who have already fought three wars.

Pakistan has rounded up dozens of Lashkar suspects including Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, an alleged mastermind of the plot.

India released information on Tuesday claiming to show that all 10 gunmen in Mumbai were from Pakistan.

Dismantling Lashkar will be politically dangerous for Pakistan’s leaders because of the group’s leading role in the dispute with India over Kashmir, the predominantly Muslim region in the Himalayas divided between them.

Pakistan’s military and intelligence services are widely believed to have helped create Lashkar as a proxy fighting force in India’s part of Kashmir, where Muslim separatists have engaged in a long insurgency.

While Pakistan’s young civilian government has taken a strong stance against Islamic extremism and reached out to India, there are doubts that the military, which has ruled for about half the country’s 61-year history, will turn decisively against its unofficial allies.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which runs hundreds of schools and clinics and has helped the victims of two recent earthquakes in Pakistan, insists it cut its links with Lashkar when the latter was banned in Pakistan in 2001.

But Western intelligence says it is a mere alias for a terror group that has developed ties to al-Qaida. Some analysts suspect the charity may supply recruits for militant operations.