Ajmal Kasab's hanging not among main headlines in Pak news channels

Pakistan has committed itself to granting India Most Favoured Nation-status by the beginning of next year and the two sides are working to increase trade to USD six billion by 2014.

Leaders from both sides have said increased trade ties could create the grounds for tackling more contentious issues like the Kashmir problem.

However, debate on Kasab's execution on social networking and micro-blogging sites like Twitter and Facebook and the websites of newspapers was more heated, with some suggesting that Indian death row prisoner Sarabjit Singh should be hanged for his alleged involvement in a string of bombings in Pakistan in 1990.

Sarabjit's family has always contended that his was a case of mistaken identity and rights activists like Pakistan's former human rights minister Ansar Burney have questioned his conviction, saying the evidence against him was faulty.

While Indians posting comments on The Express Tribune's website largely welcomed Kasab's execution, some Pakistanis called for Sarabjit's hanging and others suggested the execution was a "conspiracy" to eliminate all evidence related to the Mumbai attacks.

A person who identified himself only as Feroze wrote: "Good riddance to bad rubbish. Wish we did the same here to every terrorist caught."

Many on Twitter from both sides of the border referred to the need to tackle the masterminds behind the Mumbai attacks.

Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, named by India as the brain behind the incident, was detained for less than six months after the attacks before being freed on the orders of the Lahore High Court.

Though the US has offered a 10-million-dollar reward for Saeed, Pakistani authorities have claimed they have not been given any evidence by India that can be used to prosecute him.

The trial of the seven suspects charged with planning, financing and executing the Mumbai attacks, including LeT operational commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, by a Rawalpindi-based anti-terrorism court has been virtually stalled for over a year due to various technical reasons.

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