New Delhi:
Despite a statement by New Delhi that no specific information was given to India by Washington on David Headley, a senior US official has told NDTV that all the information they had was shared with India.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Robert Blake, who is in Delhi to finalise the agenda for US President Obama's November visit to India, said whenever the US has had any specific information, it has been shared with India.
NDTV: Foreign Minister SM Krishna said a few days ago that no specific intelligence was shared with India on Headley and therefore it strengthens the suspicions here that he was a double agent and that's why you didn't share the information?
Blake: I would want to reassure all your viewers that whenever we have any specific info on any terrorist attack, wherever it is, especially against friends like India, we share that info on a real time basis, right away to make our friends have that info. That's especially true of India. Because we attach so much importance to our relationship with India. One area of greatest growth in cooperation has been counter-terrorism and so we have been cooperating and none of that is visible to the public of course.
NDTV: But when the Indian Foreign Minister says that no specific info was shared on Headley, does that mean the FBI did not have this specific info?
Blake: I don't want to get into specifics since it's highly sensitive intelligence, but want to say again that whenever we have any kind of specific info, we share it.
The remarks by Krishna came days after reports that two estranged wives of Pakistani-American LeT operative David Coleman Headley had told US officials about his "radical connections" before the Mumbai carnage.
"We had some general and not specific information which we had received from the US prior to the heinous attack on Mumbai. But it was not specific and very general," Krishna had said.
According to media reports, two estranged wives of Headley had met US officials and informed them about his terrorist links. However, the US has maintained that these inputs were of a general nature.
Headley had made startling revelations about his activities in India to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) officials who interrogated him in Chicago in the US recently.
(With PTI inputs)