Rice in India to ease tensions with Pakistan

INDIA: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in New Delhi Wednesday to try and ease India-Pakistan tensions over the Mumbai attacks, as US intelligence blamed a Pakistan-based militant group.

Ties between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals have become strained in the wake of last week’s devastating assault by Islamist militants on India’s economic capital which left 188 people dead.

An Indian government source told AFP that Rice will be handed evidence of a Pakistan link to the attack.

“We will put on the table information so far gathered. We plan to share transcripts of satellite phone conversations that link the terrorists to their Pakistani handlers,” the senior official said on condition he not be named.

“We have evidence of numbers recovered from phones (that show) where the calls came from or were made to,” he added.

A senior State Department official said Rice would pressure the two US allies — who have fought three wars since their 1947 independence from British rule — to cooperate in wiping out terrorism.

“I want to consult with the Indian government on what we can do to help,” Rice told reporters on her way to India. “I am going to, of course, express solidarity with the Indian people. This was a horrible attack.”

India says the only gunman captured has confirmed under interrogation that all the militants were from Pakistan and received their training there.

The United States is particularly concerned about any military stand-off with India that might see Pakistan move troops from its western border with Afghanistan — a crucial battleground in the US “war on terror”.

Suspicion has fallen on Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group fighting Indian control of disputed Kashmir. The group was behind a December 2001 assault on the Indian parliament that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of another war.

India called in the Pakistani ambassador earlier this week and demanded Pakistan arrest and extradite 20 terror suspects, including the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hafiz Saeed.

Others named were Maulana Masood Azhar, chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammed rebel group, and Dawood Ibrahim, wanted in India on charges of masterminding serial bombings in Mumbai in 1993 that killed around 300 people.

NEW DELHI, Wednesday, AFP