US forces have arrested a group of Lashkar-e-Taiba near Baghdad, exposing for the first time links between Iraq and groups operating in occupied Kashmir, a report said on Thursday.
The Hindu newspaper quoted police sources as saying that key Lashkar operative, Dilshad Ahmad, had been arrested with four other party men in March, but that Washington was trying to keep a lid on the arrests.
President Pervez Musharraf banned Lashkar-e-Taiba along with another group, Jaish-e-Mohammad, in January 2002 after India claimed they were responsible for an attack on its parliament on December 13, 2001 in which 15 people died, including five attackers.
The Hindu said that with the arrests, hard evidence had emerged for the first time that groups operating in occupied Kashmir had spread their theatre of operations to Iraq.
It said the arrests were a potential embarrassment for the United States as Washington has not put the same sort of pressure on Pakistan to rein in Lashkar, as it has for it to root out members of the al Qaeda terrorists network and former Taleban regime hiding in Pakistan's wild frontier areas.
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