ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 11 -- Pakistan on Thursday closed 11 offices of a controversial Islamic charity that has been linked to last month's deadly attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai and placed the group's leader under house arrest. In India, top government officials announced a massive revamping of the country's security infrastructure, including creation of an FBI-style national agency to investigate terror attacks.

Hafiz Sayeed, the leader of the organization Jamaat-ud-Dawa, was put under house arrest in Lahore, according to a Pakistani foreign ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The arrest was confirmed by a top Jamaat-ud-Dawa official.

Sayeed was one of four individuals singled out by the United Nations Security Council late Wednesday when it placed Jamaat-ud-Dawa on a list of designated terrorist organizations and imposed sanctions on the group, including a freeze on assets, a travel ban and an arms embargo. The U.N. also said the charity was directly linked to Lashkar-i-Taiba, the outlawed Pakistani militant group that Indian authorities blame for the three-day siege in Mumbai that killed at least 171 people, including six Americans.

"Pakistan has taken note of the designation of certain individuals and entities by the U.N.," Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani said in a statement hours before the house arrest, noting that the country would "fulfill its international obligations."

Also included in the sanctions were Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the alleged operational commander and architect of the Mumbai attacks, and alleged Lashkar financiers Haji Muhammad Ashraf and Mahmoud Ahmed Bahaziq. Pakistani security forces arrested Lakhvi Sunday.

Before arresting Sayeed late Thursday, Pakistan shuttered nine Karachi offices of Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the group's main offices in Lahore and Muridke. Jamaat official Amir Hamza said Thursday night that 70 to 80 members of the organization were rounded up in raids that took place across the country. Hamza said Pakistani authorities had placed him and eight others on a wanted list and were preparing to arrest them.

"We are expecting to be picked up any minute," Hamza said. "We will fight our battles in court. We will not resort just to street protests. This is a great injustice."

Indian officials hailed Wednesday night's U.N. action as a long overdue step in the right direction, and called on Pakistan not to repeat a past pattern of arresting suspected extremists -- including Sayeed -- and then letting them go without standing trial..

"This only underscores what India has maintained throughout. That the forces of violence and terror, the organized groups which have attacked India on many occasions . . . pose a threat to civil world," Indian Deputy Foreign Minister Anand Sharma said.

Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the country's parliament that Pakistan needed to follow up on its promises of action against militant groups. "They are banning organizations. Lashkar-i-Taiba was banned. But simply they are changing names, they are changing signboards," Mukherjee said. "Faces are the same, ideology are the same. How does it help us?"

Sayeed reacted to the imposition of sanctions with a news conference at his Lahore headquarters, hours before he was placed under house arrest. He denied reports that he had met with a Mumbai attacker and said his group split from Lashkar after Pakistan banned Lashkar following a 2001 attack on India's parliament. Sayeed said Jamaat-ud-Dawa would lodge a strong protest with the U.N. and the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

"Jamaat-ud-Dawa is a thorn in the eye of India because Jamaat-ud-Dawa does not support anything which India does to Pakistan or Kashmir," Sayeed said.

BERLIN, Nov. 28 -- Pakistani militant groups on Friday became the focus of the investigation into the attacks in Mumbai as India and its archrival Pakistan jousted over who was responsible. Both sides pledged to cooperate in the probe, but tensions remained high amid fears the conflict could escalate.

Pakistan initially said Friday that it had agreed to send its spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, on an unprecedented visit to India to share and obtain information from investigators there. Later Friday, however, Pakistani officials changed their minds and decided to send a less senior intelligence official in Pasha's place, according to a Pakistani source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It was unclear what prompted the reversal, but the Pakistani source said the Islamabad government was "already bending over backwards" to be cooperative and did not "want to create more opportunities for Pakistan-bashing." Pakistan's defense minister, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, told reporters in Islamabad, "I will say in very categoric terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents."

Meanwhile, Indian authorities ramped up their accusations that the plot had Pakistani connections. "Preliminary evidence, prima facie evidence, indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved," Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said at a news conference in New Delhi. Other Indian officials echoed the statement, but none provided details.

Evidence collected by police in Mumbai, along with intelligence gathered by U.S. and British officials, has led investigators to concentrate their focus on Islamist militants in Pakistan who have long sought to spark a war over the disputed province of Kashmir. India and Pakistan have already fought two wars over Kashmir, the battleground between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan that each country claimed soon after India's partition in 1947.

A U.S. counterterrorism official said additional evidence has emerged in the past 24 hours that points toward a Kashmiri connection. "Some of what has been learned so far does fall in that direction," the official said, declining to offer specifics.

"We have to be careful here," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "When you posit a Kashmiri connection, that puts Pakistan on the table. That is huge, enormous, but what does it mean? It can be anything from people who were [initially] in Pakistan, to maybe people who used to be associated with someone in the Pakistani government, to any gradation you could find."

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who has sought a rapprochement with New Delhi, rejected widespread suspicions in India that Pakistani intelligence services may have supported the Mumbai gunmen. "The germs of terrorist elements were not produced in security agencies' labs in Pakistan," he said Friday.

Analysts said Pakistan's pledge to assist in the investigation and send its spy chief to India was a sign of the high stakes involved. When armed Kashmiri militants tried to take over the Indian Parliament in December 2001, the fallout was immediate, as both countries responded with a massive military buildup along their shared border.

"A Pakistani link here would be so utterly damaging, all the way around, to Indo-Pakistani relations," said Shaun Gregory, a professor of international security at the University of Bradford in England and a specialist on Pakistan. The decision to dispatch Pasha to India, he said, "does signal a determination on Pakistan's part to clarify that even if there's a Pakistani link here, that it had nothing to do with the government."

A senior Pakistani official said the idea for Pasha's visit came during a telephone conversation Friday between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. Singh, who had previously blamed the Mumbai attacks on groups "based outside the country," offered to provide evidence to Gillani.

"One way to ensure that" was to send Pakistan's intelligence chief, the Pakistani official said. "If there is evidence, share it."

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- A suspected missile strike from a U.S. Predator drone killed at least four people at a house in Pakistan's North Waziristan region early Saturday.

The attack occurred in the Mir Ali subdivision in the village of Ali Khel, according to local political official Muhammad Nasim Dawar.

The names of the victims have not yet been released. It is also not yet known why the house was targeted.

Six people were injured in Saturday's attack, the fourth suspected U.S. strike on Pakistani soil in November.

Meanwhile, an explosion inside a mosque in northwest Pakistan's tribal region on Saturday killed three people and injured four others, a government official said.

The explosion happened just after 4 p.m. (6 a.m. ET), leaving the Hangu district mosque in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province in ruins, said Omer Faraz Khan, deputy superintendent of Hangu.

He said rescuers were trying to save people trapped under the debris. It was not immediately clear how many people were inside the mosque at the time of the blast.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson on Thursday to lodge a formal protest against another suspected U.S. missile strike on its territory, an act Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani called a violation of his nation's sovereignty.

Wednesday's strike in the Bannu region of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province left five dead and seven wounded Wednesday. That attack was further inside Pakistani territory than previous attacks.

The attack targeted a home outside the tribal areas that U.S. intelligence says have become a haven for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters battling U.S. and NATO troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

The U.S. government has not acknowledged hitting targets within Pakistan, an ally in the war on al Qaeda launched after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. However, Pakistan's government has repeatedly complained about the strikes.

Gilani took to the floor of the parliament and renewed his condemnation of the attacks Thursday, but added he thinks they will be controlled when President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

In October, the foreign ministry summoned Patterson to lodge a "strong" protest on continuing missile attacks and said they should be stopped immediately. At the time, a missile strike from a suspected U.S. drone on a compound in South Waziristan killed 20 people.

Pakistan's government said the attacks cost lives and undermine public support for its counterterrorism efforts.

The U.S-led coalition and NATO, based in Afghanistan, have been seeking a way to effectively battle militants who are launching attacks from Pakistan's swath of tribal areas along the border.

They have become frustrated with Islamabad over the years, saying it is not being active enough against militants, a claim Pakistan denies.

The United States is the only country operating in the region known to have the capability to launch missiles from drones, which are controlled remotely.

The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries. In recent months, the U.S. drones have fired missiles at Pakistani soil at an average rate of once every four or five days.

The officials described the deal as one in which the U.S. government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan's government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes.

The arrangement coincided with a suspension of ground assaults into Pakistan by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview last week that he was aware of no ground attacks since one on Sept. 3 that his government vigorously protested.

Officials described the attacks, using new technology and improved intelligence, as a significant improvement in the fight against Pakistan-based al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. Officials confirmed the deaths of at least three senior al-Qaeda figures in strikes last month.

Zardari said that he receives "no prior notice" of the airstrikes and that he disapproves of them. But he said he gives the Americans "the benefit of the doubt" that their intention is to target the Afghan side of the ill-defined, mountainous border of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), even if that is not where the missiles land.

Civilian deaths remain a problem, Zardari said. "If the damage is women and children, then the sensitivity of its effect increases," he said. The U.S. "point of view," he said, is that the attacks are "good for everybody. Our point of view is that it is not good for our position of winning the hearts and minds of people."

A senior Pakistani official said that although the attacks contribute to widespread public anger in Pakistan, anti-Americanism there is closely associated with President Bush. Citing a potentially more favorable popular view of President-elect Barack Obama, he said that "maybe with a new administration, public opinion will be more pro-American and we can start acknowledging" more cooperation.

The official, one of several who discussed the sensitive military and intelligence relationship only on the condition of anonymity, said the U.S-Pakistani understanding over the airstrikes is "the smart middle way for the moment." Contrasting Zardari with his predecessor, retired Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the official said Musharraf "gave lip service but not effective support" to the Americans. "This government is delivering but not taking the credit."

From December to August, when Musharraf stepped down, there were six U.S. Predator attacks in Pakistan. Since then, there have been at least 19. The most recent occurred early Friday, when local officials and witnesses said at least 11 people, including six foreign fighters, were killed. The attack, in North Waziristan, one of the seven FATA regions, demolished a compound owned by Amir Gul, a Taliban commander said to have ties to al-Qaeda.

Pakistan's self-praise is not entirely echoed by U.S. officials, who remain suspicious of ties between Pakistan's intelligence service and FATA-based extremists. But the Bush administration has muted its criticism of Pakistan. In a speech to the Atlantic Council last week, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden effusively praised Pakistan's recent military operations, including "tough fighting against hardened militants" in the northern FATA region of Bajaur.

"Throughout the FATA," Hayden said, "al-Qaeda and its allies are feeling less secure today than they did two, three or six months ago. It has become difficult for them to ignore significant losses in their ranks." Hayden acknowledged, however, that al-Qaeda remains a "determined, adaptive enemy," operating from a "safe haven" in the tribal areas.

Along with the stepped-up Predator attacks, Bush administration strategy includes showering Pakistan's new leaders with close, personal attention. Zardari met with Bush during the U.N. General Assembly in September, and senior military and intelligence officials have exchanged near-constant visits over the past few months.

Pakistan has agreed to borrow $7.6 billion from the International Monetary Fund to avoid adding an economic crisis to its struggle against Islamic militants, an official said Saturday.

Finance chief Shaukat Tareen said the IMF had agreed "in principle" to the bailout after vetting government plans to tackle Pakistan's yawning budget and trade deficits.

"We believe that we can see commencement of a steady stream of inflows from now on, thereby eliminating the air of uncertainty," Tareen said at a news conference.

Meanwhile, militants fired a mortar shell into a village near the troubled Pakistani city of Peshawar on Saturday, killing one soldier and wounding another, an official said.

The loan will top up Pakistan's foreign currency reserves, whose rapid rundown had raised the prospect of a run on the rupee and a default on the country's international debt.

That risk has already eroded confidence in Pakistan's government and economy, deterring badly needed foreign investment at a time of slowing economic growth and runaway inflation.

Tareen said the government would apply formally for the loan next week. The IMF has already signaled that it will consider the application quickly.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi gave few details of the nuclear deal with China.

Pakistan said Saturday that China will help it build two more nuclear power plants, offsetting Pakistani frustration over a recent nuclear deal between archrival India and the United States.

The agreement with China was among 12 accords signed during Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's recent visit to Beijing, said Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

While Qureshi gave few details, the accord deepens Pakistan's long-standing ties with China at a time when its relations with Washington are strained over the war against terrorism.

U.S. officials including Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, who arrived in Islamabad on Saturday for talks, have rejected Pakistani calls for equal treatment with India on nuclear power.

Chinese leaders "do recognize Pakistan's need, and China is one country that at international forums has clearly spoken against the discriminatory nature of that understanding" between Washington and New Delhi, Qureshi said.

Zardari met with China's top leaders during his first official trip to Beijing since replacing stalwart U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf as president in September.

China, a major investor and arms supplier for Pakistan, has already helped it build a nuclear power plant at Chashma, about 125 miles southwest of the capital, Islamabad. Work on a second nuclear plant is in progress and is expected to be completed in 2011.

Qureshi said the Chashma III and Chashma IV reactors would provide Pakistan with an additional 680 megawatts of generating capacity.

He didn't say when they would be built or what assistance China would provide.

Nor did he discuss any measures to prevent nuclear materials from the new plants from being diverted to Pakistan's atomic weapons program. Pakistan has placed several other civilian reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.

China's Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on Qureshi's remarks.

However, ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Thursday that China was willing to continue its cooperation with Pakistan on peaceful nuclear programs supervised by the IAEA.

Pakistan's nuclear program remains a sore topic with Washington because of its past record of proliferation.

International sanctions were slapped on Pakistan after it detonated its first nuclear charges in 1998 in response to similar tests by India.

The sanctions were eased after Musharraf agreed to help Washington hunt down al Qaeda terrorists responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

But the revelation in 2004 that the architect of Islamabad's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had passed nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea set back Pakistan's hopes of becoming a trusted member of the world's exclusive nuclear club.

The U.S.-India deal allows American businesses to sell nuclear fuel, technology and reactors to India in exchange for safeguards and U.N. inspections of India's civilian -- but not military -- nuclear installations.

Boucher told reporters earlier this month that the pact with India was "unique" and that a similar agreement with Pakistan was "just not on the table."

He said Washington would help Pakistan -- where chronic power shortages are contributing to a gathering economic crisis -- develop its huge coal reserves, expand hydroelectric power generation and build wind farms on its Arabian Sea coast.

Pakistan, the Islamic world's only known nuclear weapons state, began operating its first nuclear power station with Canadian assistance near the southern port city of Karachi in 1972.

  Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 22, 2008; Page A11