India Presses Pakistan to Do More on Terror

Published: February 13, 2009

NEW DELHI — India on Friday welcomed Pakistan’s admission that the Mumbai terrorist attacks were planned in part on its soil but pressed the government in Islamabad to “act effectively against the license that terrorist groups enjoy in its territory.”

The fuller Indian response was a signal of the opportunity and challenge that awaits Richard C. Holbrooke, the American special representative, who leaves Afghanistan for India on Sunday.

Pakistan on Thursday announced it was holding six people in connection with the attacks, including one it described as the ringleader, and it hit the ball back into India’s court by asking for more information, including how the attackers procured cellphone chips and the DNA samples of nine gunmen who were killed. The sole survivor, Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani, remains in Indian custody.

On Friday, the Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, described Pakistan’s announcement as “positive” and said India would “examine” its request for information. But he made it equally clear that it was not enough.

“We will continue to review the situation, including Pakistan’s responses, and will take further steps that we deem necessary in order to protect our people,” Mr. Mukherjee said in Parliament. “The threat of terrorism from Pakistan has emerged as a global menace and cancer. The major onus of responsibility to eliminate this threat rests on the government of Pakistan.”

India’s response reflects its own need to balance domestic pressures as national elections approach with the need to lower tensions with its rival and neighbor. The United States sees the heightened tensions between India and Pakistan as a potential stumbling block to its efforts to leverage Pakistani cooperation in quashing the Taliban along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

It is unlikely that Pakistan’s latest position will allay Indian concerns entirely. Since the three-day siege of Mumbai, which killed 163 people, India has accused Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group based in Pakistan, of being behind the attack. It has called on Pakistan to permanently shut down Lashkar and turn over fugitives that India accuses of crimes on Indian soil.

The latest India-Pakistan exchange was notable in two additional respects. First, among the suspects that Pakistan has detained are two known Lashkar leaders, which is likely to please India. Second, the Indian foreign minister’s speech on Friday did not point fingers at members of the Pakistani Army or spy agency, as Indian officials have done before; that is likely to give the civilian government in Pakistan some breathing space.

However, with elections approaching in May, India’s Congress Party-led coalition government is under political pressure to demonstrate that it can extract something tangible from Pakistan to protect its citizens from future attacks.

“What we want to see is if Pakistan is still maintaining terrorist infrastructure,” said Lalit Mansingh, a retired Indian diplomat. “We haven’t seen that yet. There is still denial.”