New Delhi

NEW DELHI, India -- In a house where Rajiv Gandhi played as a little boy, the mutilated body of the former Indian prime minister was placed on a slab of ice and cloaked by his country's flag yesterday as thousands of mourners stood beneath a blazing sun for at least an hour to catch a brief, last glimpse of him.India's capital was in the first day of a week of official mourning for the 46-year-old Mr. Gandhi, who was slain along with 15 others by a bomb...

NEW DELHI -- With its troops close to capturing the rebel city of Jaffna after a 6-week-old offensive that has seen the bloodiest fighting in 12 years of civil war, the Sri Lankan government has renewed its offer of a political settlement with the Tamil Tiger separatists.President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga said in an interview published in a Sri Lankan magazine that the government was ready for negotiations, but only if the rebels agreed to surrender at least some of their weapons to show that they intended to negotiate seriously.

DEWANA, India -- With a name meaning understanding and agreement, the Samjhauta Express linking India and Pakistan was a symbol of hope that the two nations might finally trade decades of enmity for friendship. Now, that ideal of cooperation appears to have been as much a target as the scores of passengers who burned to death yesterday in a fire that swept through two of the train's carriages as it headed toward the Pakistani border. The blaze was apparently sparked by a pair of crude bombs, prompting speculation that it was the work of attackers bent on crippling the two nations' halting steps toward peace, including a high-level meeting set for today between the arch-rivals.

MUMBAI, India - Facing mounting public anger over the response of his government and security forces to last week's assault on Mumbai, India's prime minister vowed yesterday to beef up anti-terror measures, and a top police official more pointedly fixed blame on a Pakistani group for the violence that left nearly 200 dead. But analysts and citizens alike questioned whether the government's promise of reform would lead to serious changes in an anti-terrorism effort whose systemic problems were laid bare by the assault.

NEW DELHI, India - Amid fresh shelling along the India-Pakistan border and a steady exodus of foreigners fearing a war, the leaders of the two countries departed for a regional security summit yesterday with little chance that they will meet to talk peace. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said "there is no such plan" for him to meet with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf at a summit of Central Asian leaders in Almaty, Kazakhstan, that begins today. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin plans to meet separately with Vajpayee and Musharraf at the summit of 16 countries and hopes to persuade them to talk.

WASHINGTON -- The number of casualties from the powerful Oct. 8 earthquake that struck the Kashmir region of Pakistan and India in the western Himalayas still is rising. But some good might emerge from the disaster. The quake's epicenter lay near Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan's part of disputed Kashmir. At least 40,000 people died, nearly twice that many were injured and another 2 million left homeless. Damage in Indian Kashmir, across the unofficial border called the Line of Control, was less catastrophic but still severe.

NEW DELHI -- The South Asian earthquake struck at the epicenter of a principal recruiting ground and logistical center for global terrorists, leveling a number of terrorist nurseries and training camps in an area that serves as the last main refuge of al-Qaida. Much of the quake's destruction occurred in the two terrorist-infested areas of northern Pakistan where Osama bin Laden may be holed up - Pakistani-held Kashmir and the North-West Frontier Province. The Oct. 8 calamity brought foreign teams and troops to that restricted region in Pakistan and gave the international community the potential leverage to steer the area away from terrorism.

THE news from India is that Coca-Cola is back.A victim of nationalism and the government's wrong-headed economic policies for 16 years, now the elixir from Atlanta can again be sold and consumed freely.Which of course is less than pleasant news to Pepsi Cola. After an intense lobbying effort, Pepsi was allowed by the Indian government to return to the country in 1990 and since then has had the huge and lucrative market for itself.Or almost. While the American soft-drink giants were gone, a number of indigenous imitators cropped up. None, however, had the fizz or taste of the real thing.

ATTARI, India - The train had left New Delhi hours before, but Suneeta Lal can't stop crying. She lies on a vinyl mattress in the frigid sleeper car, her face buried in a thin cotton blanket, and sobs. It is almost midnight, and the noise wakes other passengers. Teen-age boys poke their heads from beneath quilts and stare. A woman across the aisle shushes her. Suneeta's husband, Manohar, reaches over and rests a hand on her arm. "I just feel so alone," Suneeta tells him. "Even with you here, I feel alone."

NEW DELHI -- India's richest man, a former Madison Avenue ad man and the Hollywood company that put life in the "Jurassic Park" dinosaurs are bringing a Disney feel to a Hare Krishna temple here.Chants, saffron pajamas and wooden prayer beads are no longer enough to lure people to this strict Hindu faith, the temple's planners say. A multimedia message might."People believe in technology so much. They believe everything they see on the television, hear on the radio or see robots do," says Madana-Mohana Das, a Russian chemical engineer and religious student at the New Delhi temple.