New Delhi, India – Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Monday that there was a foreign link to the bombings that bloodied two New Delhi markets – an apparent reference to Kashmiri militants based in Pakistan – but both nations sought to preserve their fragile peacemaking.
Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, condemned terrorism and pledged full cooperation in the bombing investigation, which came three weeks after an earthquake ravaged the disputed Himalayan region and helped draw the two nuclear rivals closer.
During a phone call Monday, Singh reminded Musharraf of Pakistan’s commitment to ending cross-border terrorism and said that he continued to be “disturbed and dismayed at indications of external linkages” to the attack, said Sanjaya Baru, a spokesman for the Indian leader.
But Baru refused to provide any details about the purported foreign links to the bombs that killed 59 people and wounded 210 – or to single out Pakistan by name.
Accusations of Pakistani involvement in a previous terrorist attack in New Delhi, the 2001 assault on India’s Parliament, put the neighbors on the brink of their fourth war in 60 years.
But they pulled back then, and the two sides appear intent on maintaining momentum toward peace gained in their cooperation since the Oct. 8 quake, which killed an estimated 80,000 people. Most of the deaths were in Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir, but India’s part also suffered.
The latest advance came just hours after the New Delhi bombings, when the two governments reached an unprecedented agreement to speed quake relief by partly opening the heavily militarized frontier that has divided Kashmir for decades.
