Pakistan Says Won't Hand Over Mumbai Suspects To India .."Ready For War."

Pakistan has refused India's demand that Pakistan hand over suspects implicated in the Mumbai terror assault.

This came after Indian security released the names of the killers they caught and revealed that all of them came from Pakistan.

Most of them were part of Lashkar-e-Taiba a terrorist group originally formed by Pakistan over the Kashmir conflict. They're officially banned by what passes for the Pakistani government, but still receive a great deal of support in Pakistan from certain elements - including Pakistan's ISI intelligence organization.

At this point, outraged Indians are demanding that at the very least, they want the kingpins implicated by the surviving jihadi turned over to them, and there's also a huge popular outcry for targeted strikes in Pakistan at known Lashkar-e-Taiba camps and operatives.

Pakistan has made a couple of showpiece arrests....sort of like the way Musharraf would pick up a Taliban figure whenever Dick Cheney flew into town and read him the riot act - but the odds on Pakistan actually putting any of these people in jail for a long spell or cracking down significantly on Laskar-e-Taiba is pretty slim. They're too well connected and have too much popular support for that.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said, "We do not want to impose war but we are fully prepared in case war is imposed on us..."We want friendship, we want peace and we want stability -- but our desire for peace should not be considered Pakistan's weakness."

The minister said India's demands for the extradition of suspects in the Mumbai attacks were out of the question and that Pakistan, which has arrested 16 people since Saturday, would keep them on home soil.

"The arrests are being made for our own investigations. Even if allegations are proved against any suspect, he will not be handed over to India," Qureshi said. "We will proceed against those arrested under Pakistani laws."

A good example of how Pakistan handles this kind of thing is the treatment of rogue scientist, bootleg nukes exporter and international criminal AQ Kahn. He's treated as a national hero in Pakistan, remains in a pleasant 'house arrest', and Pakistan has refused to allow him to be interrogated, even by the IAEA.

Neither India or Pakistan want war. Nor does the US want to take the risk of hostilities cutting off vital supplies to our troops that mostly come through Pakistan.

So the charade will likely continue - Pakistan will pretend to arrest a few jihadis and tell the rest to lay low for a while, and India's Congress party will go to elections boasting about how they 'dealt with terrorism.'

Until it happens again.