“Instead of ... war hysteria, they should address this menace,” he said.

Yang, sources said, made all the right noises with Mukherjee and condemned the attacks and agreed that the perpetrators should be punished. The Chinese foreign minister asked Mukherjee to “keep talking to Islamabad” to defuse the situation.

The Saudi Prince also met National Security Advisor M K Narayanan and Vice President Hamid Ansari apart from holding talks with Mukherjee during the day-long visit. Sources said Mukherjee and NSA shared details of the Mumbai attacks.

Al-Faisal underlined that the best way to deal with terrorism is to “cut it out” and “destroy it completely.”

The New York Times adds from Islamabad: Pakistan is moving some troops away from its western border with Afghanistan, where the United States has pressed it to combat Taliban militants, and stopping many soldiers from going on leave amid rising tensions with India, senior Pak officials said today.

A senior military official said in an interview that the decision to sharply restrict leave for soldiers was taken “in view of the prevailing environment,” namely the deteriorating relations with India since the Mumbai attacks.

The senior military official said that Pak troops were being drawn from northwestern Pakistan, where the military is fighting Taliban militants on several fronts. He said that “essential troops in limited numbers are being pulled out of areas where no operations are being conducted,” or where winter weather had already limited their ability to maneuver.

The senior official refused to say where the troops would be redeployed, although AP quoted two Pak intelligence officials as saying that the Pakistani Army’s 14th division was being sent to Kasur and Sialkot, near the Indian border, and that around 20,000 troops were being redeployed.

... contd.