The Mumbai terror attacks threaten to chill improving ties between India and Pakistan just as the West is trying to get Islamabad to focus on Al-Qaida and the Taliban close to the Afghan border.

India has not singled out Pakistan as being linked to the strikes, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday said militants based outside his country carried them out.

The comment was widely understood in Pakistan to be an accusation of its involvement.

Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said Pakistan "should not be blamed like in the past."

"This will destroy all the goodwill we created together after years of bitterness," he said. "I will say in very categoric terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents."

Deteriorating relations between Pakistan and India, which have fought three wars since 1947, would greatly complicate US foreign policy in the region.

Incoming President-elect Barack Obama has said normalizing ties between the two South Asian neighbors will be a major plank of his broader campaign to stabilize Afghanistan and beat Al-Qaida in the region.

"You can't cozy up to a country that is accusing you of complicity in terrorism," said Shaun Gregory, an expert on South Asian terrorism at the University of Bradford in Britain. "Any sign of Pakistani involvement would be extraordinarily damaging."

On Friday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani called his Indian counterpart and condemned the attacks, according to state-run Pakistan Television, which gave no details about the conversation.

US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice telephoned Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari late Thursday to discuss ties and the regional situation, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

In 2001, militants fighting Indian-rule in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir attacked the parliament in New Delhi, helping push the countries to the brink of war a year later.

It is widely believed that Pakistan used to provide material and tactical support to militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, but there has been less cross-border infiltration in recent years amid US pressure after the Sept 11 attacks.

Spy chief to aid investigation

Pakistan will send its spy chief to India to help probe the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the government said on Friday.

According to a Pakistani government statement, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told his Pakistani counterpart in a telephone conversation on Friday that "preliminary reports" about the attacks "point to Karachi," Pakistan's main port and financial hub.

The statement provided no details of the purported link to the city, a chaotic metropolis on the Arabia Sea coast in which a host of Islamic militant groups have a presence.

Pakistani premier Yousuf Raza Gilani agreed to Singh's request for the head of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency to travel to India to share information, the statement said.

ISI chief Ahmed Shujaa Pasha will head to India "at the earliest," the statement said.

Agencies

(China Daily 11/29/2008 page11)