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ISLAMABAD, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Pakistan's new Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali said on Sunday he was disappointed at India's continued refusal to enter a dialogue, even though Islamabad now had a civilian government.

"We thought that with the induction of a civilian government, the Indians might be more flexible, but an anti-Pakistan lobby does not want that to happen," Jamali told reporters while visiting an exhibition in Islamabad.

"We have told them again and again that we are ready for talks," Jamali said. "But the anti-Pakistan lobby is apparently not in favour of the Indian government talking to Pakistan. I don't understand this."

Jamali became Pakistan's first prime minister in three years last month after elections held by 1999 coup leader General Pervez Musharraf to return Pakistan to civilian rule.

Jamali said he was disappointed by an Indian government charge on Saturday that a Pakistani court's decision to free the leader of a militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir was proof of Pakistan's complicity in the uprising there. The conflict has claimed over 35,000 lives since it began in 1989.

"We'll have to wait and see...how long this attitude is going to persist," he said.

Maulana Masood Azhar, a top leader of banned Kashmiri militant group Jaish-e-Mohammada, was detained last year after Musharraf outlawed the group.

On Saturday, a three-member review board of the Lahore High Court rejected a provincial government request to extend Azhar's detention for another three months, saying there were no grounds to keep him in detention any longer.

Masood was one of three men released from an Indian prison in a barter deal with New Delhi after an Indian airliner was hijacked in late 1999 and flown to Kabul, where the then-ruling Taliban government helped to negotiate a settlement.

Jamali's comment came just ahead of a visit to Pakistan starting later on Sunday by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca, who is expected to urge talks between the South Asian rivals.

India blames Islamabad for allowing Pakistan-based militant groups to cross into Indian-ruled Kashmir to fight.

Pakistan rejects India's accusations, saying it has stopped infiltrations across the heavily militarised Line of Control that separates the nuclear-armed rivals in Kashmir.

But it does offer diplomatic and political support to what it calls the "Kashmiri freedom struggle".

Tensions between India and Pakistan have eased since last December when India blamed Pakistan-based militants for a bloody attack on the New Delhi Parliament. The incident took the two countries to the brink of war. 

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