U.S. In Difficult Position

As evidence mounts that last week's attacks in Mumbai may have originated on Pakistani soil, U.S. officials' aggressive campaign to strike at militants in Pakistan may complicate their efforts to prevent an Indian military response, which could lead to all-out war between the nuclear-armed enemies.

In December 2001, when Pakistani militants attacked India's Parliament, and again this summer, when militants aided by Pakistani spies bombed the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan, the Bush administration used aggressive diplomacy to dampen anger in New Delhi.

This time, however, the Indian government might not be so receptive to the American message - and that could derail the coming Obama administration's hopes of creating a broader, regional response to the threat posed by al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Officials in New Delhi might also feel less compelled to follow calls for a controlled response from the Bush administration, which has steadily escalated a campaign of airstrikes on Pakistani soil using remotely piloted aircraft.

The White House has adopted a clear position to justify those attacks: if a country cannot deal with a terrorism problem on its own, the United States reserves the right to act unilaterally.

Should it become clear that the men who rampaged through Mumbai trained in Pakistan, even if the Pakistani government had no hand in the operation, what will stop the Indians from adopting the same position?

"In some ways, it doesn't even matter whether this attack was hatched in some office in Islamabad," said Paul Kapur, a South Asia expert at Stanford University. "The provocation in this case is orders of magnitude more than anything that's happened before."

Even if the Bush administration can keep the situation from escalating, President-elect Barack Obama will find his administration trying to broker cooperation between two agitated and suspicious regional powers.

An important element of Obama's plan to reduce militancy in Pakistan and turn around the war in Afghanistan has been to push for a reconciliation between India and Pakistan, so that the Pakistani government could focus its energy on the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan that are controlled by Islamic extremists.

As the crisis unfolded over the past few days, Obama's advisers watched for hints about how the situation might look after Jan. 20. While they said they understand that the tensions unleashed by the Mumbai attacks might hobble the new president's aspirations, they held out hope that the attacks might, instead, open the door to increased cooperation between Pakistan and India to weed out militants intent on more attacks.

Some in the Bush administration, as well as outside experts, agree that an Indian military response is not a foregone conclusion.

Washington could use Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's past hopes for better relations to try to shape a modulated Indian response. Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said one possibility was that the Indian government could decide to strike Kashmiri militant training facilities in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, rather than facilities in the heart of the disputed territory of Kashmir, where Pakistan's government has a greater presence.

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani author whose work has been studied by the Obama team, said that any hint of a military mobilization by the Indians will give the Pakistani military the excuse it wants to shift forces away from its western border areas and back to its eastern border. If that happens, he said, it could cause a repeat of 2002, when a standoff forced the United States to turn at least some of its attention away from the Taliban and al-Qaida to work to avoid war between Pakistan and India.

So far, Obama has tried to walk a careful line during the crisis, expressing support and concern without appearing to get in the president's way.