Indian premier says Pakistan must rein in terrorists

The bombers who targeted Mumbai’s rail system had support from inside neighbouring Pakistan, India’s prime minister said today, warning that the nuclear-armed rivals’ peace process could be derailed unless Islamabad reins in terrorists operating from its territory.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s unusually blunt comments appeared to signal a major shift in relations between India and Pakistan, whose ties had warmed over the past two years.

It came as investigators named a third suspect in the series of carefully co-ordinated bombings which shattered first-class commuter rail cars at the height of Tuesday evening’s rush hour and left more than 200 people dead.

“We will leave no stone unturned – I reiterate, no stone unturned – in ensuring that terrorist elements in India are neutralised and smashed,” Singh told reporters during his first trip to Mumbai since the attacks.

“These acts of terrorism are desperate acts of desperate individuals who are trying to break the backbone” of India and the people of Mumbai.

Singh, who met bombing victims and officials during his visit, noted that Pakistan had assured India two years ago that its territory “would not be used to promote, encourage, aid and abet terrorism.”

“That assurance has to be fulfilled before the peace process and other processes progress,” he said.

Pakistan quickly denied Singh’s charges, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam saying they are “unsubstantiated and we have already rejected them.”

But investigators are certain, Singh said, that terror cells operating across India “are instigated, inspired and supported by elements across the border, without which they cannot act with such devastating effect,” he said.

“They clearly want to destroy our growing economic strength, to destroy our unity and provoke communal incidents.”

After coming to the brink of war in 2002, nuclear-armed India and Pakistan launched a peace process that has brought them closer, yet concrete agreement on the most pressing issue – the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir – has been minimal.

In immediate fallout, talks between the foreign secretaries of the two countries scheduled for July 20 appeared increasingly unlikely, with local news reports saying they had been cancelled.

Navtej Sarna, the Indian foreign ministry spokesman, said only that no announcement had been made about the talks.

Singh’s government has faced increasing criticism in recent days from the country’s media.

In one indication of the growing sentiment, a phone-in poll run last night by the NDTV news channel found 99% of callers saying the government was too soft on terrorism.

While clearly unscientific – and apparently designed to stoke public outrage - the lopsided results nonetheless underscored the pressure on officials.

Analysts saw hurdles ahead for the peace talks.

“This is certainly going to be a major stumbling block,” said Samina Ahmed, the South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group in Islamabad.

“The attack couldn’t have taken place at a worse time” because talks will presumably be on hold until India ends its investigation.

Investigators, meanwhile, were casting a wide net in their hunt for the assailants – focusing attention on a Pakistan-based Islamic militant network, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, along with smaller homegrown groups.

The investigation also spread to neighbouring Nepal, where police said today they had arrested two Pakistanis in connection with the seizure of plastic explosives in the country’s capital, Kathmandu, in 2001.

They said the two men are also being investigated for links to the Mumbai blasts, though few details were revealed.

This morning, Mumbai Police Commissioner AN Roy said a man known only as Rahil was the third person sought in connection with the blasts.

The Indian government’s Anti-Terror Squad released photos last night of two other suspects, Sayyad Zabiuddin and Zulfeqar Fayyaz.

Roy said those two suspects had been on the run since mid-May, when authorities arrested three suspected Muslim insurgents and seized large quantities of arms, ammunition and plastic explosives after a highway chase in western India.

Investigators gave few other details, though Indian news reports said all three named suspects are members of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, or Army of the Pure.

Lashkar was banned by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2001, but is thought to have reorganised under a new name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which has hundreds of branches across Pakistan.

Lashkar has denied playing any role in the Mumbai bombing. Indian authorities, though, have blamed it for many major attacks, including twin March bombings in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi that killed 20 people and a bombing that killed more than 60 in New Delhi in October.

An Indian Home Ministry official also said investigators were pursuing leads that the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India could have been involved in the Mumbai attacks, possibly with the aid of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Pakistan dismissed the allegation, with Aslam calling it baseless.

Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan but claimed in its entirety by both, is at the heart of their decades-old rivalry.

They have fought three wars since Britain divided colonial India into India and Pakistan in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.