With the Congress now backing him fully on the Indo-Pak joint statement at Sharm el-Sheikh, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will look to make a case for India acting as a responsible country and engaging Pakistan on terror on Wednesday.

At the same time, sources said, Singh is expected to make it clear that there will be no composite dialogue until Pakistan takes more concrete measures on terrorism directed from its soil against India. To that extent, India feels that Pakistan’s 36-page dossier on the progress of investigations is a 'step forward' but more needs to be done.

Despite stiff opposition to the joint statement from the BJP and its partners, who even took the matter to Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday, and unhelpful statements from Pakistan on the “lack of evidence” to arrest Lashkar-e-Toiba founder Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, sources said, there are no second thoughts in the government.

It is learnt that the dossier has been reviewed thoroughly with legal experts also being roped in to study the Pakistan anti-terror law carefully to ensure that appropriate clauses have been applied. Sources said no gap was found and that the Indian side is encouraged by the progress.

But keeping out Jamaat-ud-Dawa from the dossier and the chargesheet to ensure no links can be drawn with the Lashkar is being seen as a deliberate attempt to delink founder Hafiz Mohammed Saeed from the Mumbai case. This was validated when Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik told Geo TV today: “We do not have any proof against Hafiz Saeed. We have demanded and we are demanding from India that if you have proof, give (it to) us, but do not do propaganda. I assure we will take action. But just on hearsay we cannot arrest our citizen...if New Delhi wants some credible action, it needs to provide substantiated evidence.”

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