India's Foreign Minister, keeping up pressure on Pakistan to act against militants blamed for the Mumbai attacks, yesterday said countries failing to clamp down on terrorism would pay a heavy price.
Tension has run high between the nuclear-armed rivals since the November attacks which killed 179 people. India has blamed them on the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The group denies involvement.
"Countries found wanting in their commitment to zero tolerance of terrorism will be made to pay a heavy price by the international community," Pranab Mukherjee told a conference in India's capital.
"Our diplomatic efforts in dealing with terrorist states will continue unabated."
Indian officials are frustrated at what they see as Pakistan's slow response in arresting the attack's planners. They want the incoming US administration of Barack Obama to press Islamabad to act on a dossier of evidence presented this month by New Delhi.
While Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the attacks must have had the support of official agencies within Pakistan, the United States and its allies have stepped back from blaming the Pakistan government.
Despite the tension, the chances of military confrontation between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since 1947, is low thanks in part to the diplomacy of the United States and other powers, analysts say.
The sense that India may not have the full support of the West was highlighted at the weekend. Indian media criticised British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said on a visit to New Delhi that India needed to resolve the issue of disputed Kashmir as part of a wider strategy to improve relations with Pakistan after the attacks.
New Delhi sees the issue of Kashmir, ruled in part but claimed as a whole by both India and Pakistan, as irrelevant to the Mumbai raid.
Yesterday, the LeT, which has claimed responsibility for scores of suicide attacks on security forces in its fight against Indian rule, said for the first time that violence was not the only way to deal with Kashmir.
"We don't see the armed struggle as the only way to achieve our goal, if the world listens to our cries and plays its role in resolving the Kashmir issue," Abdullah Ghaznavi, a spokesman for Lashkar-e-Taiba, said in a statement.
Pakistan condemned the Mumbai attacks from the outset and denied involvement of any of its agencies. It has offered to cooperate with India by sending over a security official and setting up a joint team to investigate.
India has not accepted the offers.
In an Indian TV interview, Mr Miliband said Islamabad must move away from the stance towards LeT he says it held under former president Pervez Musharraf.
"It's very important that the so-called carousel-and-engage approach is one that is changed, because it obviously doesn't work," he told CNN-IBN news channel on Sunday.
"It was an approach which recognised that LeT did pose a threat but also recognised that they had to engage with the LeT."