India to answer Mumbai attacks with talk not troops

By Simon Denyer - Analysis

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India will not respond to attacks in Mumbai by sending troops to the border with Pakistan, but will instead mobilize global pressure for its neighbor to act decisively against Islamist militants, analysts say.

The military strategy was tried in 2001 and 2002 after an attack on India's parliament, but achieved little.

The crucial difference this time is that India is dealing with a civilian, democratically elected government in Islamabad -- a reasonably friendly government which does not have full control over a much more hostile, hawkish military establishment.

Military confrontation, however tempting as Indian elections loom ever closer, would only empower the hawks across the border.

"It is simply not on the table," Siddharth Varadarajan, strategic affairs editor of the Hindu newspaper said.

"If India were to take any of the military measures some armchair analysts want, that would almost certainly play into the hands of the military establishment in Pakistan."

It would also have played into the hands of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, by forcing Pakistan to withdraw troops from its tribal areas and western border.

It has even been suggested this was one possible motive behind the attacks. If so, that is not a trap India will fall into, analysts say.

Instead, the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to New Delhi on Wednesday marks the first step in a more diplomatic and finessed response to the attacks.

It is likely to be a slow process, but the only real option.

"Pakistan needs to act with resolve and urgency and cooperate fully and transparently," Rice said on Wednesday. "That message has been delivered and will be delivered to Pakistan."

TRIED AND FAILED

India says it already has compelling and detailed evidence that the attacks in Mumbai were planned on Pakistani soil and carried out by Pakistani gunmen -- for once, one of the gunmen was actually captured and gave a detailed confession.

He said he was given months of commando-style training by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based Islamist militant group which was effectively established, analysts say, by the Pakistani military's spy agency, the ISI, to fight Indian rule in Kashmir.

Lashkar was also blamed for an attack on India's parliament in late 2001, an attack which brought the nuclear-armed neighbors close to war, with hundreds of thousands of troops eyeing each other nervously across the frontline.