Pakistan could become 'failed state' - India

India’s home minister said Pakistan could become a failed state and raised doubts about who was in control of the nuclear-armed country, a news report said today.

Home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram’s comments came days after a daring attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the Pakistani city of Lahore. Heavily armed gunmen killed six police and a driver and wounded several players on Tuesday before fleeing unscathed.

“In Pakistan, with regret, I would say we don’t know who is in control there - whether it is the army or the president or the government,” the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Chidambaram as saying at a seminar on Friday.

“It is not a failed state, but it is threatening to become one,” Chidambaram said in Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment capital.

Relations between India and Pakistan have deteriorated following the November 26 terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed 164 people.

Separately, India’s external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers showed the Pakistani government’s “lack of will or capability in tackling this menace”.

At a conference in the Indian capital Friday, Mukherjee called for co-ordinated efforts by the international community to eliminate terrorism, “otherwise, no part of the world would remain immune to the flames.”