U.S. leans on Pakistan

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday urged Pakistan and India to cooperate with “resolve and urgency “ to catch and prosecute those behind last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed more than 170 people and wounded hundreds.

Speaking in New Delhi, Rice leaned on Pakistan amid a flurry of reports that a militant group there trained the assailants and planned the efficiently executed operation, which threw India’s financial capital into chaos and kept security forces at bay for 60 hours.

“I have said that Pakistan needs to act with resolve and urgency and cooperate fully and transparently,” Rice told reporters. “That message has been delivered and will be delivered to Pakistan.”

Investigators have found strong evidence pointing to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani Islamist network that has been accused of previous attacks in India, including Mumbai train bombings in 2006 that killed about 200 people.

Investigators now believe that as many as 15 people were in a hit team that struck Mumbai and that the gunmen departed from the Pakistani port city of Karachi and talked by cellphone with a Lashkar leader in Pakistan, said a person close to the investigation who requested anonymity because the probe is continuing.

Rice is expected to visit Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, today. While she was in India on Wednesday, Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Pakistani civilian and military officials. The visits were aimed at preventing a further deterioration in relations between the nuclear-armed South Asian nations.

Mullen urged the Pakistanis to “investigate aggressively any and all possible ties to groups based in Pakistan,” a U.S. statement said afterward.

Evidence of such ties has mounted, Western anti-terrorism officials said.

The sole suspect in custody and nine assailants who were killed were all Pakistanis, the officials said. And the gunmen used Thuraya satellite phones and cellphones stolen from their victims to make repeated calls to a Lashkar figure, said the person close to the investigation, citing information from British and U.S. investigators.

Numbers called on a recovered satellite phone and the cellphones match and have been traced to Yusuf Muzammil, suspected of being the commander, the source said. Investigators believe that Muzammil gave orders from Lahore, Pakistan, as his fighters battled police and commandos.

The log of one victim’s cellphone suggests a chilling sequence of events the morning of Nov. 27, the source said. Gunmen forced a Singaporean woman held on the 19th floor of the Oberoi hotel to make two calls to her husband to relay a demand to Indian authorities to refrain from action against the hostage-takers or they would kill her, the source said.

Investigators say the log shows that a call was then placed to Muzammil, after which there were no more calls to Singapore and calls by the husband went unanswered, the source said. The woman was found dead with two other women in the hotel room, the source said.

“The theory is that they killed her at that point and that Muzammil was giving orders on who to execute,” the source said.

Muzammil also made a call to Bangladesh during the attacks and asked an unknown person for five subscriber identity module, or SIM, cards, presumably for cellphones, the source said. Indian intelligence intercepted the call, which may have been related to the attacks or to separate activity in Bangladesh, the source said.

Identification materials and other evidence found on the boat used by the attackers indicate that 15 people traveled from Karachi, the source said.

“There’s evidence to show there were five additional living people on the boat and only 10 are accounted for,” the source said. It’s unclear whether the additional five were gunmen, the source said.

Investigators have identified Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Lashkar-e-Taiba’s operational chief, as another suspected mastermind, the source said. The investigators want to know whether members of the Pakistani security forces or the nation’s main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, were aware of or involved in the plot, the source said.

“They are looking at elements of the ISI and the possibility that they knew what was going on,” the source said. “They do believe the training was at a very high level of quality. There is a belief these guys may have been trained at a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Muzaffarabad,” capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.

A link to Pakistani security forces has not been established, officials cautioned.

“We know that the close relations between the Pakistani regime and the organization still exist,” a Western anti-terrorism official said. “We know as well of Pakistani intelligence officers’ presence in the training camps in Kashmir. This is a presence that continues.”

India has stepped up pressure on Pakistan to hand over 20 terrorism suspects, including Muzammil, other leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Dawood Ibrahim, a fugitive Mumbai gangster under investigation for a potential support role in the attacks. But Pakistan appeared to dig in its heels. President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview that aired Wednesday that Pakistan would try any suspects itself, and only if India provided hard evidence of their involvement in the attacks.

“If we had the proof, we would try them in our courts, we would try them in our land and we would sentence them,” he said.

Zardari also said he doubted Indian assertions that the captured suspect is a Pakistani.

Indian officials say the suspect has provided details on the involvement of Pakistani groups. But the credibility of his information was called into question Wednesday when police found an unexploded bomb he probably planted a week earlier in a railway station that he hadn’t revealed despite days of questioning. When asked about it, according to local media, he told police that he was following Lashkar’s procedures on handling police interrogations.

Wednesday night, tens of thousands of people massed on Mumbai’s waterfront, wearing “I Love Mumbai” T-shirts, singing patriotic songs and holding up banners, some of which denounced Indian politicians for allowing the attacks to happen.

“Give us a gun, send us to the terrorist base and we’ll get them!” shouted a group of young men.

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Mark Magnier

reporting from mumbai, india

Sebastian Rotella

reporting from madrid

mark.magnier@latimes.com

sebastian.rotella@latimes.com

Times staff writer Laura King in Islamabad and special correspondent Pavitra Ramaswamy in Mumbai contributed to this report.