India's leader points finger at Pakistan in train bombing

NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Friday that this week's railway bombings in Bombay had support from "elements across the border" in Pakistan, escalating the war of words between the two nuclear-armed neighbors and casting a pall over negotiations to resolve differences between the nuclear rivals.

On a visit to survivors of Tuesday's synchronized blasts, Singh accused Pakistan of falling down on its pledge not "to promote, encourage, aid and abet terrorism," saying that "that assurance has to be fulfilled before the peace process and other processes progress."

His remarks were the highest-level allegation yet that archrival Pakistan was at least indirectly responsible for the bombings, which killed as many as 200 people and wounded hundreds more. Senior Indian officials had refrained from blaming Pakistan, concerned that it might derail already-sputtering peace talks between the two countries.

But investigators have said repeatedly in the past few days that the attack, which ripped through a key Bombay commuter line during the height of the evening rush hour, bore the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, an Islamic militant group dedicated to forcing India to relinquish its portion of the contested Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, which means "Army of the Pure," is based in Pakistan, operating through a Muslim charity despite Pakistan's insistence that it had banned the group.

Pakistani officials Friday continued to reject allegations of involvement in the bombings in Bombay. A spokeswoman warned New Delhi against using the attack as a pretext for stalling negotiations between the countries over Kashmir and other issues. The talks, started after the countries were brought to the brink of war in 2002, have made only incremental progress over the past few years. A session scheduled for the coming week now looks increasingly in doubt.

Before his remarks Friday, Singh had been under growing pressure to come out strongly against Pakistan, both from his political rivals, who accuse the government of taking too soft an approach toward Pakistan, and from the general public, which has embraced the view that Pakistan was directly or indirectly behind the bombings.

Newspaper editorials urged the prime minister to condemn the "jihad factory" next door.