Pakistan Warns India Against Attack Accusations

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan warned India against accusing of it links to the Mumbai terror attacks Thursday, saying doing so would "destroy all the goodwill" between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

The remarks by Pakistan's defense minister came hours after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan SinghManmohan Singh said militants based outside his country carried out the atatcks.

Singh did not single out Pakistan, which New Delhi has accused of complicity in terror attacks on its soil before, but his remarks are likely to be taken as a sign here that India suspects Pakistani links somewhere in the plot.

A serious deterioration in relations between Pakistan and India, which have fought three wars since 1947, would greatly complicate U.S. foreign policy in South Asia as it tries to get Islamabad to focus less on its southern neighbor and more on tackling al-Qaida and Taliban militants along the Afghan border.

In 2001, militants fighting Indian-rule in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir attacked the parliament in New Delhi, helping push the countries to the brink of war a year later.

The attacks late Wednesday saw teams of gunmen target at least 10 sites, including two luxury hotels, a railway station and a Jewish center, in the financial capital of Mumbai. More than 100 people were killed.

In an address to the nation, Singh said the group that carried out the attacks "was based outside the country" and warned its neighbors "that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated."

'We should not be blamed'
Pakistan Defense Minister Ahmed MukhtarAhmed Mukhtar condemned the attacks, but said "we should not be blamed like in the past."

"This will destroy all the goodwill we created together after years of bitterness," he told The Associated Press. "I will say in very categoric terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents."

Earlier, Indian navy spokesman Capt. Manohar Nambiar said navy officers had boarded a cargo vessel it suspected of ties to the attacks that had come to Mumbai from Karachi, Pakistan. He later said the ship was not linked in any way to the strikes.

Many analysts said Wednesday's attacks were more likely to have been carried out by indigenous, Indian extremist groups blamed for a series of bombings this year.

They also noted that India's government stood to benefit politically for hinting at the involvement of its old rival — rather than admitting some of its own 145 million Muslims had become radicalized.

"It will always want to label this militancy as foreign rather than to accept it has its own problem," said Shaun Gregory, an expert on South Asian terrorism at the University of Bradford in Britain. "That sells much more easily to the Indian public than admitting serious grievances within its Muslims."