Rift Between India and Pakistan

Relations between Pakistan and India have always been tense at best. For its part, the US has tried doggedly to broker understanding between the two countries, while trying to balance nuclear weapons policies and vital interests in the war on terror. With India looking closely into possible Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai terror attacks, the entire region looks prepped for a huge international disaster. Good luck with this one, incoming administration.

From the NYT:

Apprehensive about potential reprisals by India over the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the Pakistani government insisted Saturday that it had not been involved. It pledged to take action against Pakistan-based militants if they were found to be implicated.
Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border. Pakistani security officials said they might divert troops toward the border with India.
“Our hands are clean,” the Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, said at a news conference. “Any entity or group involved in the ghastly act, the Pakistan government will proceed against it.”
The government called a crisis cabinet meeting on Saturday, a day after Indian officials suggested that a militant group with Pakistani ties, Lashkar-e-Taiba, was responsible for the attacks. Similar accusations after an attack on the Indian Parliament by another group, Jaish-e-Muhammad, brought the two governments to the brink of war in 2002.
But while the civilian leaders, including President Asif Ali Zardari, called for calm on Saturday, Pakistani security officials warned that they were preparing to move troops toward the border if need be. The security officials, speaking at a press briefing in which the ground rules prohibited identifying them by name, said that if the situation worsened, troops stationed in western Pakistan could be moved within 72 hours. “We’re ready for any contingency,” one security official said.
The security officials also noted that such a move would be likely to upset the United States, because it would mean resources were being moved away from the fight against Islamic militants in the western areas bordering Afghanistan.