"Obviously, these are two nuclear powers. Whenever you are dealing with terrorism in countries that are nuclear powers, it is always -- it creates a heightened concern. Obviously, the Pakistani government has enormous challenges -- financially, politically, from terrorists," US Defence Department Spokesman Geoff Morrell said. "We see no reason at this point to have any concern with regards to the security of either country's arsenal," he added.
Notwithstanding Pakistan's claim that its security forces have arrested Lashkar-e-Tayiba commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, suspected to be the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, along with several other key LeT terrorists, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Washington and US intelligence are still to confirm the veracity of these claims.
"What I am going to restate is a basic principle. Number one, if a country is attacked, it has the right to defend itself. I think that is universally acknowledged," Obama asserted. "The second thing is that we need a strategic partnership with all the parts in the region -- Pakistan and India and the Afghanistan government -- to stamp out militant, violent, terrorist extremists."
'I don't see any relationship between them and ex-army or ex-ISI as has been happening in the past,' says strategic analyst Shuja Nawaz, who is convinced the Pakistan army and its intelligence wing, the Inter-Services Intelligence, are not complicit in the Mumbai terror attacks.
Noted South Asia expert Stephen P Cohen has asserted that India can do more to rescue Pakistan than any other country even as tensions mount over the deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
Riedel, who was also the erstwhile director for South Asia in the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration and most recently an adviser on foreign policy to the Obama campaign, said it's difficult to believe the Pakistani government's assertions that its intelligence service has no links to LeT. If there's anything that is a 64 million dollar question today," it is finding out the "extent of its ties to the Pakistani intelligence service."
"It is now time for Pakistan to say, we are with you and we will take action because we now face a common threat and that is from radical Islamic militants," said Karl Inderfurth, who is likely to play an important role in the incoming Obama administration.
Robert Hathaway, currently director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, said, "The US calls for patience are not likely to satisfy New Delhi, and when Secretary Rice arrives in India she is likely to face sharp questioning about Washington's continued support for Pakistan."
'Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan,' a report by a high-powered bipartisan commission that was mandated by the United States Congress, that nation's parliament, has said.
Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon on Wednesday met with the officials of the United States administration to discuss the issues related to the terror attacks in Mumbai that had claimed around 200 lives, including foreigners.Menon called on the Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns during his two-day visit to Washington.Menon's visit was planned ahead of the terror attacks in India's financial capital.
The United States has sent its top defence official to India to find out the culprit behind the Mumbai terror attacks that had claimed over 200 lives, including Americans, last week.Defence Secretary Robert Gates has confirmed that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen is on his way to India or already there."But the truth is most of the people who were killed were Indians. And so it's important that we find out who did it," he said.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, hours before arriving in New Delhi, was circumspect when asked if US intelligence had warned India that a deadly terror attack in Mumbai is likely, as reported by the media, which is quoting unnamed counter-terrorism officials.Rice said that "We've been through that in the United States. It's a tough business, particularly, for a democracy, and so I have to tell you, I have a lot of empathy for what they're going through."
At a press conference that followed his rolling out his national security team on Monday, Obama when reminded that during the campaign he had said if there was irrefutable evidence of Al Qaeda leaders and training camps in Pakistan, he would go after them with or without Pakistan's permission and asked if India has that same right, replied, "Sovereign nations obviously have a right to protect themselves."
With tensions mounting between Islamabad and New Delhi over the Mumbai terror attacks, the White House has said it is yet to confront evidence of Pakistan government's involvement and trusts it to cooperate in the investigation.
Pakistan must give absolute and transparent cooperation to India in the investigations into the Mumbai terror attacks, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday.
Karl 'Rick' Inderfurth, foreign policy advisor on South Asia for United States President-elect Barack Obama's campaign, who is expected to play an influential role in the Obama administration's policy on the subcontinent, says, "It was said immediately after the 9/11 attack that 'we are all Americans'. Now, in the wake of the Mumbai tragedy, it is right for all of us to say 'we are all Indians.'
Bruce Riedel, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is being talked about as likely to be tapped for a senior position in an Obama Administration that deals with South Asia, said while the LeT's continuing relationship with the Pakistani intelligence services, the ISI, is much debated and the Pakistani authorities deny any such relationship, "The fact is that the organisation has been tolerated in Pakistan despite the 2002 ban."
Former Central Investigative Agency deputy director John McLaughlin, a 32-year veteran of the agency who has studied the Lashkar-e-Tayiba extensively, believes that while the "Pakistani intelligence was instrumental in helping to create the LeT in the outset, these days it's not at all clear that the Pakistani intelligence has any direct control over this group."He said he was skeptical that even rogue elements in the Inter Services Intelligence today held any sway.
As tensions ratcheted up with India pointing an accusing finger at Pakistan for the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, US President Bush called up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for a second time to offer him all assistance in investigating this tragedy, even as he instructed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to go to New Delhi to offer his and the United States' condolences and to tone down India's angry rhetoric against Islamabad which could spill over to a military conflict.
It was both a defiant and defensive Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's Ambassador to the US, who in appearing on the Sunday news talk shows on television, and asked to explain India's accusing finger at Pakistan for the deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai, began pointing to the 9/11 terrorist coming from countries that couldn't be held responsible for the attacks and also terrorist training camps in the United States itself.
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