PM talks tough on terror, says he will act too

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that his Government is not soft on terror but admitted the intelligence mechanism needs strengthening.

"There is no question of the Government being soft on terrorism," Singh said at the concluding day of the two-day Governor's Conference held at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Wednesday.

He admitted that the recent bomb blasts in Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Delhi prove "vast gaps in intelligence".

"One suggestion is to set up a central agency to investigate and prosecute all terrorist incidents.

"This need not necessarily be a federal investigative agency, but could be a central agency which can assist the states in investigation whenever a major terrorist event takes place," he said.

He, however, was not in favour of establishing a central agency to co-ordinate counter-terrorism strategy.

"There are already a number of central agencies who are involved in determining counter-terrorism strategy, based on extant situations. Perhaps, there is no need to set up a new agency, and instead we ought to ensure better coordination and integration among the existing agencies for devising an effective counter-terrorism strategy," the prime minister contended.

In this context, he said that what was "most important of all" was closer cooperation between the Central Government and the states and among the states themselves.

"This is particularly important today when as we have seen, there is a common strand running through each of the major terrorist incidents."

"Unfortunately," he said, the public debate on the issue of terrorism had "tended to get driven by politics, and has centred on certain laws enacted or repealed by governments of different political persuasions".

Noting that the government had no "fixed, inflexible or ideological view" on this, he said: "We have, in fact, taken the initiative to strengthen various laws like the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

Singling out the "issues in contention", Manmohan Singh said these basically related to the procedural aspects of investigation and prosecution of terrorism related offences.

"Even this aspect is under consideration with the aim of identifying provisions which could be made to further strengthen the hands of the law enforcement agencies, and also, simultaneously, address the apprehensions which led, first to the repeal of TADA (Terrorists and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act), and later of POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act), and about which there are cross party views which cannot be ignored," the prime minister maintained.

Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said her party wants strong anti-terror laws with sufficient safeguards against misuse.