Pakistan arrests 'main operator' in Mumbai attacks

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan acknowledged for the first time that the Mumbai terrorist attacks were launched from its shores and at least partly plotted on its soil, saying Thursday that it had arrested most of the main suspects including one described as "the main operator."

Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said Pakistan has started criminal proceedings against eight suspects — some of them also named by India as the masterminds of the attacks — but he reiterated that authorities needed more evidence from New Delhi to secure convictions.

The revelations suggest Pakistan is serious about punishing those behind the November attacks, which killed 164 people and stirred fear that the nuclear-armed neighbors could slide toward war and that Pakistan might be distracted from its struggle against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

India and the U.S. have pressed Pakistan hard to dismantle Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned Pakistan-based group fighting Indian rule in the divided Kashmir region that is widely blamed for the Mumbai carnage. Islamabad and New Delhi have fought two out of their three wars since 1947 over the region.

India's Foreign Ministry called Pakistan's announcement "a positive development" and said it would consider Islamabad's request for further information.

Malik said investigators had traced a boat engine used by the attackers to sail from Pakistan to India and busted two hideouts of the suspects near the southern city of Karachi.

Other leads pointed to Europe and the United States, and Malik said Pakistan would ask the FBI for help.

"I want to assure the international community, I want to assure all those who have been victims of terrorism that we mean business," Malik said, waving a copy of Pakistan's initial findings at reporters gathered inside his ministry.

"We will continue our investigation, but we want tenable evidence from India. We want full cooperation from India so that this kind of ring be smashed."

India says all 10 gunmen — only one of whom was captured alive — were Pakistanis and that their handlers in Pakistan had kept in close touch with them by phone during the three-day assault.

New Delhi provided a dossier of evidence to Islamabad, testing Pakistan's insistence that it would do all in its power to punish those responsible — and that it has truly abandoned its past sponsorship of Islamist militants including the Taliban.