Islamabad: Pakistan foreign affairs minister Khawaja Asif on Wednesday said that the United States' list of 75 militants handed over to Pakistan didn't have the name of Mumbai attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed.
Saeed has been under house arrest in Pakistan since January 2017. He carries a bounty of $10 million on his head.
External affairs minister Asif, during a session in Pakistan parliament today, said that the US had handed Pakistan a list of 75 militants.
"The Haqqani network is on the top of the list, but none of the militants are Pakistanis," Asif was quoted as saying by the Express News.
Saeed, a Pakistani citizen, headed the JuD which was listed as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US in 2014.
The JuD is the front for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror outfit which is responsible for numerous terror attacks in India, including the Mumbai terror strike of 2008.
The Afghan-based Haqqani network has carried out a number of kidnappings and attacks against US interests in Afghanistan. The group is also blamed for several attacks against Indian interests in Afghanistan, including the 2008 bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul that killed 58 people.
The US, Asif said, had made a habit of handing over lists of wanted people to Pakistan, which traded them for favours a matter that needed to be debated.
He said the US had been told that Pakistan no longer had influence over the Afghan Taliban as it did in the past.
"Neither are we supporting them (Afghan Taliban), nor do they need our help," Asif told the senators during a session of the parliament's upper house.
"Somebody else is sponsoring them now," he added, without elaborating on it.
Asif asserted that many of the key Taliban names were now shadow governors in Afghanistan or no longer alive. On his maiden visit to Pakistan yesterday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson renewed the US demand for tough action against Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network.
(With PTI inputs)
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