Friday, August 18 2006 11:36 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: In an interesting twist, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said that last month's Mumbai blasts could have been carried out by 'freelance terrorists', even as he acknowledged interference by his country's intellegence agency in India's internal affairs.

"These are freelance terrorists who are doing this (terror attacks). That is the reality. There are freelance terrorists who are roaming around and doing all this," Musharraf told the Frontline magazine in an interview, referring to the July 11 blasts in Mumbai that killed 200 people and injured over seven hundred.



He said the two countries should join hands to investigate and move against them.

Acknowledging that intelligence agencies of the two countries have been operating against each other over the past 50 years, Musharraf said it was time that these agencies reach an agreement to stop interference in each other's internal affairs, if at all there is.

With regard to India's demand for preventing certain groups in Pakistan to operate as these are cover organizations for terror outfits, he said, "One has to see what is the evidence against them.There are legal compulsions".

New Delhi has asked Pakistan to ban the Jamaat-ud-Dawa as it is a "reincarnation" of the banned Lashker-e-Taiba terror outfit. India has also demanded the arrest of the JuD leader Hafiz Mohammed Saeed.