ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The United States plans to increase pressure on Pakistan to curb the activities of two militant Islamic groups after a suicide attack on the Indian Parliament that killed seven people, U.S. officials said.
In its efforts to obtain the continued cooperation of Pakistan in the fight against Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terrorist network, the Bush administration had refrained from pushing too hard for it to clamp down on the two organizations, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, which operate openly in Pakistan and advocate violence to drive India out of Kashmir.
But India's accusation that Lashkar-e-Tayyaba was behind the shootout Thursday and Jaish-e-Muhammad's claim of responsibility for a similar attack on the Indian Legislative Assembly in Kashmir that killed 40 people in October have forced a reevaluation by Washington.
Pakistan has "told us that they are planning on moving gradually to curb this kind of extremism," a senior State Department official said. "I think what this means is if these groups are indeed carrying out these kinds of attacks, that process will have to be accelerated."
A Western diplomat in Islamabad concurred, saying the Bush administration will push Pakistan to restrain militant groups to try to reduce tensions with India over Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim border region that India considers a state in its union.
Sixteen people, including a child, were killed yesterday in fresh separatist violence in Kashmir, police told Reuters. India blamed Kashmiri separatists.
Pakistan condemned the suicide attack Thursday, in which five gunmen also died, but government spokesmen angrily warned India not to use the killings to justify retaliation and rejected assertions that it was carried out by a Pakistani group.
"Pakistan has never in the past allowed its soil to be used for terrorism and neither will it allow it in the future," said Aziz Ahmed Khan, spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Office.
Pakistan's defense hinges on its definition of terrorism. The government has long identified militant groups fighting against Indian control of Kashmir as freedom fighters and tolerated their activities even after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The government has started to crack down on radical religious schools, which provided training grounds for fighters who joined the Taliban, and has begun to purge its intelligence service of pro-Taliban elements in response to U.S. pressure. But Kashmiri separatist groups retain strong backing from elements of the military dictatorship and the public, so the government has been reluctant to restrain them and risk internal problems.
