In a clear toughening of stance, India today squarely blamed ‘official agencies’ in Pakistan for supporting the terrorist operation in Mumbai. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accused Islamabad of exporting cross-border terror into India, and using terrorism “as an instrument of state policy”.

The PM’s unusually strong remarks invited a sharp reaction from Pakistan, which said the statement would “not only ratchet up tensions but also occlude facts and destroy all prospects of serious and objective investigations into the Mumbai attacks”.

Pakistan also rejected the material handed over to it by New Delhi on Monday in support of its claims that the terrorists in Mumbai had come and were handled from Pakistan. Islamabad said the material did not comprise “credible evidence”.

Singh made repeated references to Pakistan in his inauguration speech at the Chief Ministers’ conference, and dismissed the Pakistani line that ‘non-state actors’ might have been responsible.

“The terrorist attack in Mumbai in November last year was clearly carried out by a Pakistan-based outfit, the Lashkar-e-Toiba,” the PM said. “On the basis of the investigations carried out, including (those by) the agencies of some foreign countries whose nationals were killed in the attack, there is enough evidence to show that, given the sophistication and military precision of the attack, it must have had the support of some official agencies in Pakistan.”

Home Minister P Chidambaram had made a similar statement over the weekend, saying an operation like the one in Mumbai could not have been carried out without the complicity of “state actors or state-assisted actors”.

... contd.