Nawaz speaks up, admits Kasab is a Pakistani

New Delhi: It’s a slap on the face of the Pakistani government. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has acknowledged that Ajmal Kasab, the terrorists under arrest for the Mumbai attacks last month, is a Pakistani.

"I have checked myself. His (Kasab) house and village has been cordoned off by the security agencies. His parents are not allowed to meet anybody. I don't understand why it has been done," said Shraif in an interview to the Geo News TV channel.

"The people and media should be allowed to meet Kasab's parents so that the truth could come out in the open," he said, adding that "We need some kind of introspection."

Sharif’s statement challenges Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's claim that there was no proof that Kasab hailed from Faridkot village in Punjab province.

Zardari, who earlier acknowledged that the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage could be 'non-state' actors from Pakistan, has now said there is still no "real evidence" that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai came from Pakistan.

"Have you seen any evidence to that effect. I have definitely not seen any real evidence to that effect," Zardari told BBC in an interview earlier this week.

Pakistani security agencies and local officials in Faridkot have launched a cover-up since India made it public that Kasab belonged to the village in Punjab province and his father acknowledged to a Pakistani newspaper that the gunman captured in India was his son.

Sharif also slammed President Zardari's rule, saying the functioning of the current Pakistan People's Party-led government is making Pakistan look like a "failed state". Pakistan presents the picture of a failed and ungovernable state due to the absence of the government's writ and the country urgently needs a new roadmap to pull it out of the problems it is currently facing, he said.

"Since 1977, the army has ruled the country for more than 20 years... A state subjected to frequent military intervention in politics can only become ungovernable." Sharif also criticised what he described as the government's "clarifications" regarding the purported violation of Pakistani airspace by Indian fighter jets.