Mumbai Attack: Pakistan, India ties chill after attacks

NowPublic Mumbai Channel

A coordinated series of attacks took place across Mumbai on November 26, 2008. Follow updates on this unfolding story from NowPublic members, consult Mumbai resources and emergency information — and tag your stories, photos and videos "Mumbai" to see them featured here.

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

That 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 told The Associated Press. "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 pledged his government's "full support to jointly combat extremism and terrorism," Gilani's office said.