NEW DELHI INDIA : India on Wednesday said 42 militant training camps were operating in Pakistan and accused the country’s government of making little effort to close them.

The accusation came after the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan met last month for the first official talks since the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, which India blames on Pakistani militants.

“There are 42 terror camps in Pakistan (and) all the terrorist camps are active,” Defence Minister A.K. Antony said at a military function in Goa state.

“Pakistan has not taken serious steps to destroy these terror camps,” he said.

India blames the Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for the Mumbai attacks, which left 166 people dead and another 300 injured.

It also suspects Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, of supporting anti-India militants.

The recent talks between the rival nations resulted only in a promise that both sides would stay in communication.

“As far as the dialogue is concerned, India will explore all possibilities but I don’t expect any miracles,” Antony said.

In the United States on Tuesday, lawyers said that a Washington-born man accused of scouting Mumbai for the attacks now planned to plead guilty to terrorism charges.

Russia is willing to back sanctions against Iran so long as they are targeted and do not affect the civilian poupulation, President Dimitri Medvedev said at a news conference with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy.
Speaking in Paris, Medvedev said he hoped that negotiations with Iran would come to an agreement without sanctions. But if we don’t get there, Russia is ready, with its partners, I have already said it, to have sanctions introduced, he said. These sanctions must be carefully weighed and must be sanctions that are intelligent ones. They must not be directed against the civilian population. He said that if sanctions were to be applied, they could not be punitive to the point of preventing further dialogue with the Iranian regime, which says its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes. Significantly, Medvedev did not mention Iran in his opening comments, while the question was the first point that Sarkozy made in his. Asked about negotiations under way with the United States to cut nuclear weapons stockpiles, Medvedev said talks were advancing well and that negotiators were down to the fine print, with most substantive issues agreed.

US special envoy on Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke says US will urge India and Pakistan to resume their dialogue, adding that US would support them if they decided to resume the talks but Washington was not willing to play the role of a midwife.
Holbrooke during a briefing in Washington said that US would cooperate with Afghan government, adding that US civilian aid would help in Pakistan’s development.
Responding to a question about how the US could balance its ties with India and Pakistan when both were suspicious of each other, Holbrooke noted that ‘all Americans were delighted’ with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s current visit to Washington. ‘But no one in Pakistan should see this as a diminution of the importance we attach to them,’ he said. He said that US would take positive steps to end poppy cultivation in Afghanistan.

SEOUL: North Korean envoys delivered a message from their leader Kim Jong-Il when they met South Korea’s president Sunday, raising hopes of an end to high tensions that had sparked fears of military clashes.

Details of the verbal message were not disclosed.

But both sides at the first high-level North-South meeting since President Lee Myung-Bak took office 18 months ago expressed hopes for warmer ties after more than a year of deep hostility from Pyongyang.

“I’m leaving with good feelings,” Kim Ki-Nam, a close aide to Kim Jong-Il, told reporters as he left for the airport after the talks.

Relations have been icy since the conservative Seoul leader scrapped a “sunshine” aid and engagement policy towards the hardline communist state and linked economic assistance to nuclear disarmament.

Military forces along the heavily-fortified border have been put on alert at various times.

Tensions rose further after Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests this year, which were punished with tougher United Nations sanctions.

Kim Jong-Il’s message was “regarding progress in inter-Korean relations”, said chief presidential spokesman Lee Dong-Kwan, declining to say more.

Lee “explained the consistent and firm principles of the government’s North Korea policy and asked the North’s delegation to relay them” to leader Kim, the spokesman said.

“If the South and the North genuinely try to resolve problems through dialogue, there will be no problems that cannot be resolved,” he quoted the president as telling the visitors.

Kim Jong-Il had sent the envoys to Seoul to join national mourning for former president Kim Dae-Jung, who pioneered the “sunshine” policy and held the first inter-Korean summit in 2000.

“The North’s delegation expressed thanks for the meeting and expressed hope that the North and the South will cooperate and resolve all problems,” the spokesman said.