Rehman Malik, the senior security official in the Interior Ministry, said the attackers had set sail from southern Pakistan to Mumbai, where they used inflatable boats whose engines had been purchased in the southern Pakistani port of Karachi.
"Part of the conspiracy was done in Pakistan," Malik said in a televised news briefing Thursday. He said a formal police inquiry had been started, "and I want to assure our nation, I want to assure the international community, that we mean business."
His remarks offered the fullest public accounting so far of Pakistan's investigation into the Mumbai attacks last November, when 10 attackers went on a rampage through luxury hotels, a Jewish center and other targets, leaving 163 people dead.
Only one of the attackers, Ajmal Kasab, survived, and Islamabad has already acknowledged that he was of Pakistani origin. But the disclosures on Thursday seemed, initially at least, to vindicate some of India's earlier claims of greater Pakistani involvement, although they were not confirmation of India's claims that elements of the Pakistani security apparatus may have been involved.
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2 museums broach China-Taiwan conciliation Obama's envoy lands in a Kabul shaken by Taliban assault Pakistan arrests 6 over Mumbai attacks Malik went much further Thursday in acknowledging the extent to which Pakistan had been the rear-base for the onslaught, seeking to assure India that Pakistan was investigating the killings vigorously. India has previously accused Pakistan of procrastinating in the inquiry, and has accused Pakistani "official agencies" of involvement, sharpening tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, which have gone to war in the past.
It was not immediately clear why Pakistan had chosen this moment to publicize its findings. Malik's disclosures came on the final day of a visit to Pakistan by Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama's special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan, who was scheduled to fly later to Kabul. The timing may, thus, have been intended to display Pakistani good will.
Malik said investigators had identified three boats used in the attack.
"The boats that were used by the terrorists to reach Mumbai are under our possession," he said. "We have also identified the crew. We have located the hideouts."
He identified by name some of those arrested as a result of the inquiry and said one of them had been lured back to Pakistan from Spain.
"Muhammad Ishfaq is under our custody," Malik said, referring to one of the detained suspects. "Javed Iqbal, located in Spain - he is under our custody," he said, without elaborating on their roles.
Sketching the international profile of the attackers' communications, he said cellphone SIM cards were bought in Austria while calls over the Internet, using a server in Texas, were paid for in Barcelona.
"One person named Javed Iqbal was living in Barcelona," he said. "Don't ask how I brought him to Pakistan. He was lured to come here."
Malik identified another of the conspirators held in Pakistan as Hamman Amin Sadiq, who, he said, had been traced through telephone records and bank transfers.
"He was basically the main operator," Malik said.
India, along with many Western intelligence agencies, has accused the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of responsibility for the attacks. Malik said that Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the operational commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the alleged overall mastermind of the attacks, was "under investigation."
Lashkar-e-Taiba is an outlawed militant group that wants to expel India from Kashmir.
Malik said e-mails that claimed the responsibility for the attacks were allegedly created by Zarar Shah, the communications coordinator of Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Malik said Thursday that the Pakistani authorities had not yet determined the identities of the other nine attackers because information provided by India was vague. "We have requested more information from India," he said.
He said Pakistan was pressing India to provide DNA profiles of all 10 attackers.
Pakistan had given Indian officials a list of 30 questions to which investigators were seeking answers, including some relating to the records of conversations between the attackers and their handlers.
Vishnu Prakash, a spokesman for the Indian Foreign Ministry, said that India would respond officially to Malik's disclosures after the Indian ambassador in Islamabad received official word about them from the Pakistani government later in the day.
Malik said that Pakistan had "gone the extra mile" to satisfy Indian concerns. Pakistan's message to India, he said, was that "we are with you and we have proved we are with you."