US Ambassador David C Mulford described Pakistan’s admission that the Mumbai attacks were launched from its soil as an “important first step in the right direction” and said the US will “watch and help” to ensure that Islamabad completes the investigation and prosecution in the case.

“I think it is very upward looking, important first step in the right direction,” Mulford said on the sidelines of a function. He said Islamabad’s response to the Indian dossier was the “beginning of a process” that they “accept and are willing” to proceed on the material provided by New Delhi.

Earlier in the day, making a suo motu statement in Lok Sabha, Pranab Mukherjee said: “We are at a point in our relationship where the authorities in Pakistan itself have to choose the kind of relationship that they want with India in the future. Much depends on actions in the Mumbai case reaching their logical conclusion.”

He said “substantial gains” in the process of normalisation achieved during the last five years are at “grave risk” as the dialogue process is premised on the commitments given by Pakistan that territories under its control will not be used for terrorism against India in any manner.

He pointed out that the composite dialogue process with Pakistan has been at a “pause” but emphasised that India has “no quarrel” with the people of Pakistan. “We do not think that they should be held responsible or face the consequences of this situation. We have, therefore, consciously and after due deliberation not thought it necessary or fit to curtail people-to-people contacts, trains and road links,” he said. But he said India “will continue to review the situation including Pakistan’s responses and will take further steps that we deem necessary in order to protect our people.”

“In their official response, the Pakistan authorities have admitted that elements in Pakistan were involved in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai... This is a positive development,” Mukherjee told the House.

Noting that the Mumbai attack was not the first terror strike in India that had emanated from Pakistan, he said “nonetheless, with Mumbai, a threshold was crossed and it was imperative that Pakistan act credibly against that infrastructure to prevent further attacks.”

Pakistan, he said, engaged in “prevarication, denial, diversionary tactics and misplaced sense of victimhood” after the Mumbai attack. “I do not discount in any way either their intent or their sincerity but the fact remains that the overwhelming official response of Pakistan to the Mumbai attack was not appropriate to a terrorist attack where innocents were massacred in cold blood.”