India slams Pakistani militant leader India has dismissed remarks by a prominent Pakistani militant leader criticising plans to boost trade between the nuclear-armed rivals as "irrational" and "irresponsible." Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks, told the Financial Times at the weekend that Pakistan's moves towards granting greater market access to Indian goods were a "conspiracy" to destroy the economy. In New Delhi, S M Krishna, India's foreign minister, said he was not surprised by the statement. We don't comment on irresponsible remarks emanating from Pakistan. We don't want to dignify by responding to such remarks which are irrational and which are not at all helpful," he told reporters on Tuesday, according to Press Trust of India. Indian officials have in the past demanded that Pakistan arrest Mr Saeed, who was subjected to a UN travel ban and asset freezes after the Mumbai attacks, but who is building a growing public profile within Pakistan. The professor of Islamic studies is playing a leading role in a new umbrella group of militant groups, hawks retired from the military and hard-line religious parties. The front, known as the Pakistan Defence Council, aims to pile pressure on the weak coalition government of Asif Ali Zardari to take a tougher line with India and the US. The coalition is widely perceived as having the tacit blessing of elements within Pakistan's military who want to ensure their voice is heard in the run up to elections due by early 2013. The front held a rally in the city of Rawalpindi, near Pakistan's army headquarters, on Sunday, where a giant banner read: "America and India have killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims, so how can we be friends?" The coalition held a similar rally in the eastern city of Lahore, which lies near the Pakistan-Indian border, last month. Further gatherings are planned in other major cities. India sees Islamabad's tolerance of public activities by Mr Saeed and other extremists as symptomatic of its wider failure to combat Islamist groups fostered by Pakistan's intelligence agencies to act as proxies in Kashmir and Afghanistan. Pakistan and India have, however, been making halting moves towards improving ties. Pakistan said late last year it planned to grant Most Favoured Nation status to India - a step which, if implemented, would grant India the same level of access to Pakistan's markets as that enjoyed by other trading partners. India granted Pakistan the privilege in 1996, but Islamabad has yet to reciprocate. Mr Saeed said on the sidelines of the rally on Sunday that Pakistan should only consider closer business ties once an ossified dispute over Kashmir had been resolved. "We believe that this is a very big conspiracy against Pakistan, this all is underway to destroy the economy of Pakistan," Mr Saeed said, in reference to plans to grant Indian MFN status. Mr Saeed later re-iterated his suspicions in a speech to the crowd, where his supporters brandished the black and white flag of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, an Islamic charity that has emerged as a successor organisation to LeT. Jamaat-ud-Dawa has been placed on a UN sanctions list although it operates relatively freely in Pakistan. The prospect of a thaw in ties with India has angered sections of Pakistan's security establishment, which has long played on nationalist sentiment to cement its immense political and economic influence. Yusuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister, who has clashed with the military over a controversy known as "Memogate," said last month that there could not be a "state within a state," an unusually blunt reference for a Pakistani politician to the army's hidden power.