The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Muzaffarabad

Pakistan shut offices and arrested scores of activists of an Islamic charity as international pressure mounted for firm action against militants blamed for the Mumbai attacks, officials said on Friday.

The overnight raids followed Pakistan announcing it would abide by a U.N. decision placing Hafiz Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, on its terrorism sanctions list of people and organizations linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The action followed mounting pressure for action from India and the United States after the attack by gunmen that killed 179 people, including six Americans, in Mumbai last month.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte met with Pakistani political leaders and army chief General Kayani before going to New Delhi on Friday, as Washington kept up intense diplomatic efforts partly aimed at keeping Pakistani-Indian relations from worsening.

Saeed, who founded Lashkar in 1990 and officially left it in 2001 just days before Pakistan banned it, has been put under house arrest, according to one of his spokesmen.

Three associates were also added to the U.N. list and will be subject to sanctions freezing assets and restricting travel, but a Pakistani television news channel reported one of them is dead and another has been in a Saudi jail for the past three years.

An intelligence official told Reuters that Maulana Masood Azhar, head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad group blamed with Lashkar for a 2001 attack on India's parliament, was also detained.

One close aide of Azhar's told Reuters: "I think they could have detained him to relieve pressure, but I don't know the exact whereabouts of the Maulana."

Meanwhile, Pakistan on Friday pressed India to share evidence from the Mumbai attacks, warning that any effort to prosecute key suspects rounded up in Pakistan will be hamstrung without it.

India says Pakistan must dismantle the militant group blamed for last month's attack, which left 173 dead, including nine gunmen, and sharply raised tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.

Pakistan, under pressure from the U.S. to avoid a crisis that would divert Islamabad from battling the Taliban and al-Qaida on its Afghan frontier, has arrested two alleged masterminds of the assault.

On Thursday, it clamped down on an Islamic charity after the U.N. branded it a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the powerful Pakistan-based guerrilla group blamed for the Mumbai attacks.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Friday that Pakistan firmly believed that its territory should not be used to commit any act of terrorism.

"However, our own investigations cannot proceed beyond a certain point without provision of credible information and evidence pertaining to Mumbai attacks," Qureshi said in a televised statement.