New Delhi/Islamabad: Pakistan must cooperate with India and fully investigate November's militant attacks in Mumbai, UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon said on Wednesday.
Ban, in Pakistan after a stop in Afghanistan, also announced the setting up of a UN inquiry into the December, 2007 assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
The UN Secretary General arrives in India on Thursday.
He's expected to receive details of the Mumbai terror attacks when he meets External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
The UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon will be in India for a day and is expected to be informed about the evidence India has on Pakistani links to the attack.
Sources said New Delhi is likely to urge the UN Chief to press Pakistan to cooperate in tracking down the culprits. His visit is primarily for the sustainable Development Summit to be held on Thursday.
Relations between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have been strained since militants killed 179 people in the attacks in India's commercial capital.
India has put dialogue on hold.
Ban said the United Nations wanted India and Pakistan to resume dialogue and resolve outstanding disputes peacefully.
"(Pakistan) must have a full investigation into this issue and fully cooperate with the Indian government," Ban told a news conference with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.
India blamed the banned Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group for the attacks and said there must have been support from Pakistani security agencies.
Pakistan has denied any involvement by state agencies and says it is investigating a dossier of information from India. Gilani told Reuters last month that Pakistan would release details of its investigation 'very soon'.
A committee of the UN Security Council in December added four leaders of the LeT to a list of people and groups facing sanctions for ties to al Qaeda or the Taliban.
The sanctions also covered what the committee said was a front for the LeT, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD).
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LOOKS INTO BHUTTO KILLING
Pakistan has said it would fulfil its ‘international obligations’ and detained scores of members of the groups, including two of four leaders singled out by the UN Security Council committee.
Pakistani officials have not commented on the whereabouts of two other leaders the committee identified.
Authorities have shut five militant training camps and also closed offices of the JuD and frozen its assets.
The group says it is a charity and has appealed against the UN listing.
Asked if he thought Pakistan was complying with the UN sanctions, Ban, who is also due to visit India, commended a proposed change to Pakistani law that would enable authorities to prosecute citizens who commit crimes outside the country.
Ban later met Bhutto's widower, President Asif Ali Zaradri, and told him the United Nations had agreed to a government request for a UN commission of inquiry into Bhutto's killing in a suicide attack in December 2007.
"I intend to establish very shortly an independent commission of inquiry headed by a very distinguished person who I'm going to nominate in a very short period of time," Ban said.
Earlier investigations by Pakistan's previous government and the US Central Intelligence Agency accused an al Qaeda-linked militant of killing Bhutto, a staunch supporter of the US-led campaign against Islamist militancy.
Some of Bhutto's aides expressed dissatisfaction over those investigations.
Ban also urged Pakistan to do all it could to recover a senior UN refugee agency official who was kidnapped in the southwestern city of Quetta on Monday.
US citizen John Solecki, head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Quetta, was grabbed by gunmen who intercepted his vehicle and shot dead his driver.
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