TENSIONS BETWEEN nuclear rivals India and Pakistan have further escalated after claims by New Delhi that all 10 gunmen who attacked Mumbai last week killing 172 people, were from Pakistan.
"The terrorists who have been killed in these encounters in Mumbai were of Pakistani origin" India's junior federal interior minister Shakeel Ahmad said yesterday.
It has also emerged that days before the militants struck Mumbai, Indian authorities had been warned of an imminent attack by Islamist gunmen who would arrive by sea, according to a senior coast guard source.
The owner of the city's Taj Mahal hotel said he had also received a warning of a possible attack and had stepped up security.
In a strongly worded message handed over simultaneously to Shahid Malik, Pakistan's high commissioner in Delhi, and the foreign ministry in Islamabad, India warned of a "freeze" in bilateral ties unless its neighbour vindicated its January 2004 promise to prevent anti-Indian terrorists from operating from within its borders.
India has not directly accused Islamabad's civilian government of involvement in the strike but has expressed deep frustration over its neighbour's inability, unwillingness or both to prevent armed militant groups from using its territory to train and launch attacks on Indian targets.
Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari has appealed to India not to "punish" his country for last week's attacks, saying militants could precipitate a war between them.
"Even if the militants are linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, who do you think we are fighting?" Mr Zardari told the Financial Times.
India's newly appointed federal home minister P Chidambaram, meanwhile, said that he wanted to assure Indians that their government would respond with determination and resolve to the grave threat posed to the Indian nation.
Both countries, however, have denied amassing troops along their border but have issued "warning orders" placing them on higher alert.
India claims all the nine terrorists shot dead by army commandos for laying siege to Mumbai's two luxury hotels - the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi-Trident - and a nearby Jewish centre, after a 60-hour gun battle that ended on Friday, belonged to the al-Qaeda-associated Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT or Army of the Pure) group based at Mudrike near the southern Pakistani city of Lahore.
Basing its claims on the testimony of Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone gunman captured by Mumbai police, India has linked the planning and execution of the Mumbai attacks to LeT's head operational commander known by his various code names, Muzammil, Yusuf and Abu Hurerra.
A resident of Faridkot village near the central Pakistani town of Multan, Kamsab, who was paid Rs150,000 (£2,000) for the mission, claimed that the 10-man suicide team of which he was a part left Karachi on a merchant vessel around mid-November.
They later hijacked an Indian fishing vessel and landed in Mumbai on November 26th in two dinghies to execute their strikes.
Meanwhile the US, worried that the dispute could undermine the Pakistani army's campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda cadres on the frontier with Afghanistan by deploying to the eastern Indian border, was sending secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to Delhi tomorrow to try and defuse tension between the nuclear neighbours.
"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 co-operation and that is what we expect [from Pakistan]," Dr Rice told reporters travelling with her to London.
She underplayed the threat of an India-Pakistan conflict claiming that the two had now forged a different relationship than earlier, a reference to ongoing bilateral peace talks since 2004.
The US is keen for the Pakistan army to remain engaged in fighting the Taliban in the restive tribal areas adjoining Afghanistan before the onset of winter when heavy snow restricts movement and allows militants to regroup ahead of spring.
A furious and frustrated India, however, is considering a pause in the peace talks and has amassed evidence regarding the terrorists for presentation to the Pakistani authorities.
"Little or no progress can be made in the investigations unless Pakistan arrests key suspects based in their country," a senior officer associated with the Mumbai shootings said.
The Mumbai shootings prompted the state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh from the ruling Congress party to resign amid growing public fury at politicians for failing to prevent such frequent terrorist strikes.
On Sunday, federal home minister Shivraj Patil also resigned over the Mumbai shootings.