India chief of security resigns in disgrace; Bush sending Rice

MUMBAI, India — The top domestic-security official resigned in disgrace Sunday for the failure to thwart or quickly contain the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last week, as the government announced measures to bolster anti-terrorism efforts and struggled to calibrate a response to what it views as Pakistani complicity.

The Bush administration, hoping to help defuse new, potential hostilities, said it was sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to India this week "to stand in solidarity with the people of India as we all work together to hold these extremists accountable."

Top officials have suggested groups based in Pakistan were involved in the attacks and did not rule out suspending diplomatic relations or launching a cross-border raid against suspected militant training camps in Pakistan.

Shivraj Patil, the home-security minister, became the first senior official in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's administration to leave office over the attacks, which have lain bare glaring deficiencies in India's intelligence and enforcement abilities.

Singh promised to strengthen maritime and air security and look into creating a new federal investigative agency — even as some analysts doubted big changes were possible.

"These guys could do it next week again in Mumbai and our responses would be exactly the same," said Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management, who has close ties to India's police and intelligence.

While Indian officials insisted publicly only 10 heavily armed men carried out the attacks, there were new indications others were involved and the attackers had accomplices pre-positioned on the ground.

The three-day siege of Mumbai, India's financial capital, ended Saturday with at least 172 dead, 239 wounded and two of Mumbai's most famous five-star hotels — the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the Oberoi — partly in ruins.

At least 28 of the dead were foreigners, including at least six Americans and eight Israelis at a Jewish religious center.

Despite Pakistan's repeated assertions that it bore no responsibility, the attacks have raised the pitch of India-Pakistan tensions to their most dangerous level in years.

On Sunday, a senior government official said Singh's administration would have to consider a range of measures to show toughness toward Pakistan. Options include suspending peace talks, which have gone on at a snail's pace for five years; suspending diplomatic relations altogether; and striking camps across the border suspected of training terrorists.

Reuters quoted a senior police official as saying Sunday that the only gunman captured alive told the police he was a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba organization, blamed for numerous attacks in Kashmir, a disputed territory administered by India.

Lashkar was banned in Pakistan in 2002 under pressure from the United States, a year after Washington and Britain listed it as a terrorist group. It is since believed to have emerged under another name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, though that group has denied links to the Mumbai attack. Both are reported to be linked to al-Qaida.

The Indian government has not allowed any outside access to the captive, who has identified himself as Ajmal Qasab, a Pakistani citizen, and who is getting medical treatment at a military hospital in southern Mumbai for a leg wound.

But an officer of the Anti-Terror Squad branch in Mumbai, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the man had given inconsistent answers to questions, sometimes saying there were 10 attackers, sometimes saying there were more.

The officer also said Anti-Terror Squad investigators believed there were accomplices on the ground who might have pre-positioned weapons at the hotels, and that names and telephone numbers of five Mumbai residents were found among the mobile phones and wallets of the attackers.

On Sunday evening, Singh said his government would expand the National Security Guard, the elite anti-terrorist unit that sent commandos to flush out attackers. He also said discussions were under way to establish a federal agency of investigation to streamline the work of state and national agencies and fortify maritime and air security. The police have said the attackers came by boat. "Clearly, much more needs to be done," Singh said.

Sahni, of Conflict Management, called for an overhaul of the nation's police force with better weapons and equipment and real training.

"The way Mumbai police handled the situation, they were not combat ready," said Jimmy Katrak, a security consultant. "You don't need the Indian army to neutralize eight to nine people."

With no SWAT team in this city of 18 million, authorities called in India's only unit trained for such crises. But the National Security Guards, largely devoted to protecting top officials, is based near New Delhi, and it took the commandos nearly 10 hours to arrive.

That gave the gunmen time to consolidate control of the hotels and Jewish center, Sahni said.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.