India demands swift action from Pakistan

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By C. Bryson Hull

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India demanded Pakistan take decisive action over deadly attacks in Mumbai it said were carried out by militants from its nuclear-armed rival, while the West urged cooperation to ease tension.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa were due in New Delhi, with the militant attacks that killed 183 people in India's financial capital threatening to reverse improving ties with Pakistan.

Britain's top military officer warned the tensions between the old adversaries could set back Pakistan's offensive against Islamist militants along the Afghan border.

India's foreign ministry said on Monday it called in Pakistan's envoy to New Delhi and told him attackers, who investigators said had months of commando training in Pakistan, had come from there.

"It was conveyed to the Pakistan high commissioner that Pakistan's actions needed to match the sentiments expressed by its leadership that it wishes to have a qualitatively new relationship with India," a foreign ministry statement said.

The Times of India reported New Delhi also renewed a demand Pakistan hand over 20 militants wanted in India, including Dawood Ibrahim, a Mumbai underworld figure blamed for bomb blasts in the city in 1993 that killed 260 people.

Ibrahim is reported to be living in Pakistan.

Pakistan, in a report by its official Associated Press of Pakistan, said its high commissioner had gone to the Indian foreign ministry "as per routine" and had not been summoned for a meeting or been issued with any official demarche.

Investigators said the militants were trained by the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament. That event nearly set off the fourth war between the two countries since Pakistan was carved from India in 1947.

The attacks have prompted the resignation of the interior minister and offers to step down from other top politicians from the ruling Congress party coalition.

Facing an election by May, analysts say Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must walk a delicate line not to upset regional stability but act forcefully enough to counter opposition accusations Congress is weak on security.

Many Indians have expressed anger at apparent intelligence lapses and a slow reaction by security forces to the rampage.

The attacks against Mumbai's two best-known luxury hotels and other landmarks in the city of 18 million are a major setback for improving ties between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

Rice was due to visit India on Wednesday, underscoring the gravity with which Washington saw the regional implications. She met British Foreign Secretary David Miliband in London on Monday.

"I don't want to jump to any conclusions myself on this, but I do think that this is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that is what we expect (from Pakistan)," Rice told reporters.

Officials in Islamabad have warned any deterioration of ties would force it to divert troops to the Indian border and away from a U.S.-led anti-militant campaign on the Afghan frontier.

Britain's chief of defence staff said in a speech that would have deep consequences.

"If tensions between India and Pakistan continue to escalate, there's a risk they and we could be diverted from the real issue: Dealing with the terrorist groups who perpetrate such criminal and barbaric acts," Air Chief Marshal Jock Stirrup said.

"The nationality of the terrorists does not strike me as the key issue," he said, but rather cooperation among countries "to eliminate such terrorism as a force in international affairs."

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana called both countries' foreign ministers on Monday and urged Pakistan to make good on its promise to cooperate in the investigation.

Pakistan has vowed to work with India in investigating the militant assault, but on Monday rejected what it called unsubstantiated allegations of complicity in the attacks.

It also backtracked on a decision to send the chief of its main Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) security agency.

(Reporting by NEW DELHI, MUMBAI and ISLAMABAD bureaux, Sue Pleming and Adrian Croft in LONDON, Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Michael Roddy and Jerry Norton)

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